
■'.'■ ■-,■■■ . 



MWMM 




2nd COPY 
1898. ' 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
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Chap. _.__]£ copyright So.__. 
Shelf___..L<b_ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



FEB 28 1899 




V 



WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. 



He had the muscle of a woodsman, the eye of a seer, the 
hand of a ready writer, the tongue of a champion of humanity, 
the brain of the ages, a heart that felt for all the race, and a 
soul that ever kept in touch with God. He reared an eternal 
building of fair proportions. 



THE ETERNAL BUILDING 



OR 



The Making of Manhood 



GEORGE T. LEMMON 

Author of Better Things for Sons of God 



" Never mortal builder's hand 
This enduring fabric planned.' 



— Scott 



bf-1 z- ■ r 




NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI: CURTS& JENNINGS 



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25252 



Copyright by 
EATON & MAINS, 



1899. 



TWO COP 



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KB 1 8 7899 J 






The Foreword. 



THE making of manhood is the greatest business in the 
world. If the message here sent forth shall aid any 
in the manufacture of themselves into such men and 
women as the world delights to crown and God joyously 
receives to himself, great joy shall be my reward. I find 
that snugging up to a little coal fire imparts far more 
warmth to my chilly body than any number of eloquent lec- 
tures on the awful, consuming heat of the sun; hence, in 
this book, I have tried so to put my thought that the reader 
may find himself hugged up close to the great, warm heart 
of the master builders of the past, and be, by that embrace, 
aroused to work mightily and build grandly for himself. 
What one man has done must always stir and nerve an- 
other. Deeds are eloquent; I have tried to serve simply 
as their interpreter. 

The youth of to-day, those who have that in them from 
which a man, a woman, may spring forth to bless the 
world, are not a witless, unthinking set. Their souls ask 
questions of their minds as often as their minds ask ques- 
tions of the history of the past. They desire to know the 
why of deeds as well as the method of them; especially 
eager are they to know the why of the service the present 
and the future demand of them. In answer to these in- 
telligent outreachings of the growing mind and soul of 
the rising generation I have not hesitated to treat in a 
practical way the deeper questions that confront every 
opening life. I believe these parts of the book will be 



4 The Foreword. 

welcomed as cordially as any, for I have tried to make a 
little plainer those problems on which I longed for light 
when my own mind was opening. Indeed, this thought 
has ruled the whole: I have tried to make just such a 
book as I wish now I had got into my hands fifteen years 
ago. Had it been so, immeasurably better would have 
been my start in life. 

I count it a rare privilege to enjoy the friendship of 
James W. Lee, D. D., the keen-witted author of that sug- 
gestive book, The Making of a Man, and of Orison S. 
Marden, M.D., whose Pushing to the Front and succeed- 
ing volumes have put him in the forefront of our writers 
on character building; and here confess that no little part 
of the inspiration that has come to me to build this book 
has come from their works, which from such widely sepa- 
rated view-points look out on life. 

Whenever I have quoted I have endeavored to give full 
credit. In those instances where this full credit is lack- 
ing it may be known that I have culled from some one who 
culled without crediting. George T. Lemmon. 



The Architectural Plan. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE BUILDING. 

PAGE 

The Builder of Palaces, n 

The Builder of Nations, ....;. 15 

The Builder of Science, ....... 22 

The Builder of Religion, 26 

The Wonders of the Builder, 35 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF THE BUILDING. 

A Good Animal, ........ 49 

How to Become a Good Animal, ..... 54 

The Hand and Head of the Builder, .... 65 

The Marvelous Provision for the Body, . . . .67 

Destroyers of the Building, 73 

Tobacco, .......... 75 

Opium, 82 

Intoxicants, ......... 82 

The Dance, 86 



CHAPTER III. 

THE SOCIAL PROVISION FOR A GREAT LIFE. 

Companionship, ........ 101 

The Contest Begins, ....... 107 

The Science of Success, .•',.. . . . . .112 

Good Manners, 115 

5 



6 The Architectural Plan. 

PAGE 

Cheerfulness, 126 

Promptness, . . . . . . . . . 133 

The Purpose of Man's Social Endowment, . . . 140 

The Wonders that are Before Us, . . . . 149 



CHAPTER IV. 
THE DOME AND ITS WONDERS. 



The Need of Large Brains, 
The Brain an Inheritor, 
The Mind and the Truth, 
The Quest of Truth, . 
Why Start with God? . 
Will Power, 

The Crown of Self-mastery, 
Tact, .... 



Getting Wisdom Under Cover, 



157 
161 
168 

173 
178 
184 
194 
204 
212 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TEMPLE WITHIN THE DOME. 

The Superintendent of Construction, . . . . 231 

The Ladder of Self-evident Truth 234 

The Great Affirmation, . . . . . 261 

The Nature and Culture of the Monitor, .... 262 

The Problem of Temptation, ..... 281 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE WONDERFUL TENANT OF THE BUILDING. 

The Whence and Whither of the Tenant, . . . 313 

The Hunger of the Tenant for Love, .... 324 

The Power of Love, . 330 

The Thirst of the Tenant for Power, .... 338 

Faith the Conqueror, 354 

Index 373 



List of Portraits. 



William Ewart Gladstone Frontispiece 

George Washington facing page 20 



Galileo 

Martin Luther 

James Abram Garfield 

Charles Lamb 

Frances E. Willard 

Napoleon Bonaparte 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

Sir Walter Scott 

Christopher Columbus 

Nikola Tesla 

Immanuel Kant 

Otto Von Bismarck 

John James Audubon 

Harriet Beecher Stowe 

Abraham Lincoln 

William Lloyd Garrison 

James Russell Lowell 

Florence Nightingale 

John Wesley 

George Mliller 

7 



23 
32 
58 
83 
88 
114 
127 

139 

144 

152 
164 

187 
200 
215 
235 
266 
289 
336 
35o 
365 



THE DISCOVERY OF THE 
BUILDING. 



I AM more than a life. I am the somewhat who has life. — Thorndale. 

When God created man — his last and best work — this was as if a king, having 
built a great city and adorned it with many and various works, after he had 
perfected all should command a very great and beautiful image of himself to 
be set up in the midst of the city, to show who was the builder of it. — Theo- 
dorus Mopsuestenus. 

The meaning of creation is not understood till dust stands erect in a living 
man. That a great purpose was present from the beginning, directing and 
controlling, there can be no doubt. It presided over the first nebulous mist 
that floated out to take form in the foundations of the earth. It measured and 
weighed the matter and force necessary to form the globe. It determined the 
elements required to do the work lying through the years before it. It assigned 
to them their laws, specific gravities and affinities, and appointed, beforehand, 
the combinations and collocations they were capable of making. 

But not till the atoms throbbed in a human brain and beat in a human heart 
did the purpose which had through the ages run stand out defined and jus- 
tified. Then it was that the intention underneath the drift of the ages spelled 
itself out in the unity of thought, the freedom of choice, and the capacity for 
love, potential in the intellect, will, and heart of the first man. He was the 
realization of an ideal, which gave meaning to the long periods of preparation. 
As the final expression of the creative process he was at once the interpreter 
and the interpretation of all that had gone before.— James W. Lee, D.D., 
The Makiiig of a Man. 



THE ETERNAL BUILDING 



CHAPTER I. 
THE DISCOVERY OF THE BUILDING. 

The Builder of Palaces. 

MAN is a builder. If the evolutionary hypothesis is 
true, that ape, what-is-it ? missing link, pre-Adamite, 
who first uncurled his tail from the limb of the tree from 
which his ancestors had for eons been content to swing 
themselves, and set himself to build of bough and clay and 
moss and stone a tiny dwelling into which he could run 
out of the wet, must have been the first man, or, rather, 
this act was the sign that apedom was ended and mandom 
begun. The sign still testifies. The ape still swings from 
tree to tree and dwells amid their branches; man, even of 
the lowest orders — African pygmies, Australian bushmen, 
Patagonian earth-eaters, Eskimo seal hunters — rears some 
sort of a roof for his covering and contrives some sort of 
a pillow for his head. 

With the question when and whence man came we 
have nothing now to do, save to express our belief that 
when he came, he came with the breath of God within him, 
and came when the purpose of God would be the best con- 
served by his advent, and in such a manner as best fitted 
him to rear for God on earth a race that would do his will. 

It is with man in the world we have to do. Man is the 

interpretation of nature. The purpose of creation was an 

11 



12 The Eternal Building. 

enigma until man rose up out of the dust with the image 
of the Eternal upon him and the breath of the Divine di- 
lating his nostrils. Then nature knew its mission — it was 
to be the servant of the crown of God's creative work. 
From the days of Adam until now men have been builders. 
In Eden's garden the first pair may have been content 
with some sylvan dell, but once out in the world and the 
contest for the continuance of his supremacy over nature 
pressed upon him, man has built and built, until the world 
is crowded with the work of his hand and brain. Tents 
and temples, barns and bungalows, cottages and cathe- 
drals, mansions and mosques, palaces and pyramids, shrines 
and synagogues, kraals and kiosks, harbors and lighthouses, 
canals and railroads, have sprung from his magic touch, 
and still he builds. 

Every great race that has been dominant in the earth, 
or even the master of a fraction of the globe, has left its 
architectural monuments to arouse the curiosity or admi- 
ration of succeeding peoples. To build and to build some- 
thing that would endure has been the passion of the 
masters of every great state in all ages. From the earliest 
days of which we have historic record, when from the 
banks of the Nile the shouts of the builders of the pyra- 
mids rang in the air, down to that day when to the music 
of a thousand bands and the marching tread of a parading 
army and the echoing plaudits of a numberless multitude 
the monument to the American hero was unveiled on the 
banks of the Hudson, men have been rearing wood and 
granite, marble and precious stones, in glorious piles, to 
witness to future ages the fact that they have lived and 
wrought in this world of change. 

When Father Abraham stood before Pharaoh some of 
the pyramids which are still the wonder of the builders of 
the world cast their shadow on him. Perhaps the very 
obelisk that now points to the sky in our metropolitan 



The Builder of Palaces. 13 

city was before his eye. When Moses with his host jour- 
neyed forth toward the promised land they filed down the 
avenue of the pyramids and looked into the stony face of 
the Sphinx. When Solomon awed the world by the splen- 
dor of Jehovah's peerless temple its fame spread far and 
fast because it so far outshone the glorious architectural 
creations of the past. Even then China had thrown her 
vast wall across her northern frontier, and her earlier tem- 
ples of the sun lifted their fanes to catch its radiance; 
Mexico had laid the foundations for those glorious piles 
that culminated in the palaces of the Montezumas, and the 
eternal snows of the Peruvian Andes looked down on the 
stately beginnings of the splendors of the Incas. 

When Daniel reached Babylon he found those mighty 
walls which for a century defied the Medes and Persians. 
He breathed the perfume of that wonder of the world — her 
hanging garden — and though the eyes of his soul looked 
on no temple but the one in ruin at Jerusalem, those of 
his body could look in no direction without beholding the 
shadow of Great Bel. Jonah and Nahum walked through 
avenues of grandeur, and their voices echoed from palace 
to palace and temple to temple when they preached of 
judgment to come in Nineveh, " that exceeding great city. " 
Had any queen in history so beautiful a home as the pal- 
ace Esther the Beautiful entered at Susa ? Even the elo- 
quent diction of Homer failed him when he would describe 
the circling walls, and hundred gates, and pillared avenues, 
and sculptured regal residences men had reared at Thebes. 

Then as we approach the life of the cities and peoples 
whose history is more completely written for our study, 
how the monuments of man's building spring up before us! 
Greece presents to our eyes the splendors of her majestic 
creations. Through the eyes of Demosthenes and Paul 
we look from Mars Hill upon the aggregated glories of the 
Agora and its statues of the gods, the Acropolis and its 



14 The Eternal Building. 

Temple of the Wingless Victory, and the bronze Colossus 
of Minerva. Ephesus has her temple to Diana, and Anti- 
och her vast amphitheater, in which we have raced in the 
chariot of Ben-Hur. Then we follow the march of empire, 
and Rome with all its palaces of the Caesars, its Coliseum 
and Pantheon, Forum and baths of the emperors, is before 
us. Then Christianity bursts out on the world; Rome 
wins St. Peter's; London, St. Paul's; Paris, Notre Dame; 
Venice, St. Mark's; Florence, Santa Maria; Antwerp, Can- 
terbury, Cologne, Milan, Rheims, Seville, Strasburg, and 
a host of other cities, their magnificent and famous cathe- 
drals, and no city, town, or hamlet is content until a spire 
lifts its cross toward the heavens. 

How much, also, of the story of every nation's life is 
treasured in its great buildings. At the mention of their 
names the history of centuries flashes out upon the screen. 
Thus England has her Bridge and Tower, Parliament 
Buildings and Westminster Abbey; Scotland, her Castles of 
Holyrood and Stirling; France, her Tuileries and Louvre, 
Bastile and Hotel des Invalides; Russia, the Kremlin; 
Spain, the Alhambra and Escurial; Venice, the Palace of 
the Doges; Copenhagen, the Blue Tower; Constantinople, 
St. Sophia. Even America, young as she is, has her his- 
toric buildings. The modest brick hall of Peter Faneuil 
is cherished as the ' 'Cradle of Liberty ; " Independence Hall, 
in Philadelphia, is the mecca of patriotic youth. Mount 
Vernon and Monticello are names indissolubly linked with 
the story of our greatness, while the Capitol with its soar- 
ing dome and the palatial libraries at Boston, Chicago, 
and Washington foretell the triumphs of our architects. 

In works of utility what triumphs has man achieved! 
His railroads girdle the globe; his steamships reduce the 
oceans to a ferry. He makes Africa an island by sluicing 
the waters of the Mediterranean into the Red Sea; he lets 
daylight into the very heart of the Alps at St. Gothard 



The Builder of Nations. 15 

and Mont Cenis; he runs the gimlet of science through the 
Berkshires for the Hoosac Tunnel; he levels a shelf for 
the rails along the precipices of the Rockies and the Andes; 
he spans the Firths and the Hudson and the Mississippi 
and the St. Lawrence and Niagara with his cables and 
cantilevers; and sets up the bars against the sea and the 
floods in the jetties and levees of the Mississippi and the 
dikes of the Netherlands. Such a builder is man! 

For the more ostentatious yet less utilitarian triumphs 
the builders of the present need not be ashamed to look 
those of earlier centuries in the face. Had the ancients 
their hanging floral wonder at Babylon ? the moderns 
have the Eiffel Tower. Had Rhodes her Colossus ? our 
City by the Lake has its Ferris Wheel — the Eiffel Tower 
touched tip to base and set spinning on a shaft of steel. 
Alexandria may tell of her lighthouse that was; New York 
has her Statue of Liberty with electric torch flaming far 
over the sea to enlighten a world. 

The Builder of Nations. 

Man is a builder. Yet, though we spend our years 
amid the works of his hands, we shall not discover the 
greatest building in the world. Structures of wood and 
brick and granite and marble are not the greatest things 
that men have built. Did Rome rule the world ? Then 
it was the Roman breed of men who reared the power of 
Rome and made its standards to run conquering through 
the earth. Does Britannia rule the wave? It is the Anglo- 
Saxon blood that was fired by Cromwell and Blake and 
Nelson, which throbs with the lust of conquest and gain in 
the heart of middy and admiral, seaman, prince, and gunner 
alike, that makes the navies of the world dip their colors 
to the crimson cross and permits the Union Jack to wave 
without question over a quarter of the globe. Do the 
Stars and Stripes float on the breezes that blow in every 



16 The Eternal Building. 

harbor of the world as an ensign of freedom and the guar- 
anty of the equal right of every man to the pursuit of his 
best good ? Then it thus swings for freedom because Pil- 
grim and Puritan, Cavalier and Huguenot, and the best 
blood of a score of nations mingled here to give the world 
a race of heroes and an asylum from oppression that would 
speed the coming of the kingdom of God. 

Men are the builders of nations. Whatever for weal or 
woe America, England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, 
Russia, Spain, Turkey, Japan, or any other nation is 
to-day, it is just what its citizens have made it. To man's 
honor or to his shame is the record of these lands. How 
do men build nations ? Let us see. 

Here is a lad. His cradle is a basket. The hand that 
rocks it is the Nile. Out from that cradle, ere he can 
prattle, he is taken, and though having the face of a slave, 
he is made the fondling of a princess. The years pass. 
The babe becomes a man. Like a prince he has been 
educated. Like a prince he is placed at the head of armies 
and proves himself a master of men. The honors of the 
empire with a seat at the king's table are his, when 
the sound of groans wrung from the lips of a slave 
by the lash of a taskmaster ring in his ears. It is the 
voice of his own people. The face of the whipped slave 
is an image of his own. As this slave groans so groan a 
million more, and every groaning Hebrew is his brother. 
The iron runs into his soul. His blood is no longer 
Egyptian, but Hebrew as at birth, and choosing rather to 
suffer affliction and ignominy with a people whose God is 
the God of his fathers, a people who are his own people, 
than to longer dwell in the palace of Pharaoh, he smites 
the taskmaster to the ground. Egypt falls; Israel rises. 
And as with this taskmaster and slave so it was with the 
nations for whom they stand. This child of the Nile, pet 
of a princess, flees for his life, but flees to meet and com 



The Builder of Nations. 17 

mune with God. It takes him forty years to get ready. 
Nations are not born in a day. Then he comes forth. 
He has talked with God, and his soul is on fire. In a year 
he has blighted Egypt and humbled Pharaoh. He hails 
the slaves as his people; leads them from bondage by a 
march which is itself a miracle; puts them to school in the 
wilderness; patiently endures until the discipline of time 
places a generation in their graves; then, in sight of the 
promised land, presents his successor to the people and 
presents to his successor a nation, with a God and a taber- 
nacle, law and the machinery for its administration, an 
army drilled for victory, and a code of morals that was 
not bettered till Christ's day. 

Moses was the maker of Israel. It was a man working 
through men that accomplished this wonder in the earth. 
More miraculous than plagues and divided waters, or fiery, 
cloudy pillar, or daily manna, or sweetened brine, was the 
making in less than half a century out of a mob of pusil- 
lanimous slaves a nation of conquerors with whom their 
former oppressors dared not cross arms for centuries. 
This did Moses, a man ! 

Look again. Israel is made, but it needs preservation 
and a capital. From the hills of Bethlehem runs a shep- 
herd lad with a basket of homemade goodies for his big 
brothers in the army, carrying the old sling that is his 
constant companion. He finds that for weeks the Israel- 
ites have been defied by one gigantic warrior. There is 
need of a hero in Israel. He has arrived. The whiz of 
his sling is heard. The stone on which parading soldiers 
have stubbed their toes flies to its mark. The giant drops. 
The lad of the sling is triumphant. The stormy way to 
the throne opens before him. At last he is king; the 
Jebusites surrender their citadel, and Israel wins Jeru- 
salem. David, the man, animating other men to dare as 
he dares, subdues rebellion, routs the enemies of Israel, 



18 The Eternal Building. 

wrings tribute from the surrounding nations, and prepares 
the way for the peaceful splendor of Solomon. Behold 
again what a man can do! 

Young Europe has long been the toy of Asia. Attica 
has been the buffer on which the worst blows and woes 
have fallen. But Attica is now divided. A young ruler, 
with a state like " Little Rhody " at his back, comes to 
the fore. Demosthenes may thunder against him, but he 
becomes master of Greece. Hitherto Europe has defended 
herself as best she could against the invading hordes of 
Asia. This boy, with a sword between his teeth, will 
beard the Asiatic lion in his den. At Arbela the champions 
of two continents cross lances. Darius with the blood 
of the Medes and Persians and the million sons of Baby- 
lon, Nineveh, Susa, and the Ganges is on the one side. 
The army of Europe has less than fifty thousand — and 
Alexander. It is twenty to one, but the one wins! Night 
finds Darius dead; Persia, the last great oriental monarchy, 
lies a wreck; Asia in the dust; Europe in the saddle, the 
master, and to remain the master through the momentous 
centuries of the history of the race. Behold what one 
man can do! 

England is in shame. A tyrant is on the throne, and 
brother knaves are the masters of the kingdom. The 
Reformation is born, and the foundations of the future are 
being swiftly laid. Which way will England swing ? To 
Rome or to the Reformation ? Will Catholicism or Protes- 
tantism master the commerce that is to spring up like 
magic at the touch of coming discoveries and inventions ? 
Will the New World become the child of Rome or of the 
Reformation ? No man can tell, yet these are the ques- 
tions that are to be settled. Then a sturdy farmer leaves 
his plow and wins his way from a captaincy in, to the 
commandership of, the Parliamentary army, assists in the 
destruction of the royal disgrace of England, when Parlia- 



The Builder of Nations. 19 

ment itself goes wrong dares to turn it out of doors, and 
as there is none else to uphold the authority and power of 
the English nation, shoulders the burden himself, and as 
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth makes the peace of 
a master with all the enemies of England, wins for Britain 
that supremacy of the sea that she has never since re- 
signed, "arrested the sails of Libyan pirates and the per- 
secuting fires of Rome," humiliates Spain, the sponsor of 
Romanism, extorts from France the protection of her Prot- 
estant peoples, and proclaims in the ear of the prophet 
that because of him England and America shall be Protes- 
tant, and the rule of the world shall be theirs. Cromwell 
was the maker of modern England, and to him, with Wil- 
liam of Orange and Wolfe at Quebec, we owe our inherit- 
ance in this land of freedom. Paint this Puritan, " warts 
and all," for there were warts on his character as well as 
on his face, but still look ye, behold what a man can do ! 
Europe is a seething caldron of discontent. Kings and 
people have been emancipated from the power of the 
priesthood, but have not apprehended that law of mutual 
dependence that is the parent of enduring liberty. Power 
being in the hands of the kings, they have used it to grind 
the people into a fury of madness. In France the storm 
bursts. For centuries the Church and the State have been 
one, and the prime minister often a prince of the Church ; 
now against the Church as well as against the State the 
mob turns. Hell vomits all its brood of devils upon 
the unhappy land. The State is overthrown, and the 
heads of king, queen, and princes glut the guillotine. 
Church doors are walled up, for religion is no longer 
needed. Reason is enthroned, and men shall be their own 
gods. But man makes a poor god. Reason without 
righteousness is insane, and red-handed, blood-hungry 
fiends terrorize Paris and spread their infernal contagion 
throughout France. They who seize the sword shall 



20 The Eternal Building. 

perish at its edge, and self-constituted leader after leader 
is rushed through the terror to his death. For six years 
this satanic intermittent fever devastates the land ; then the 
master appears. Those who have danced in blood through 
every street in Paris now look into the mouths of shotted 
cannon. Diabolism falters. Hell is cowardly. Five feet 
one of man, with a sword in his hand, sends them scurry- 
ing to cover. The Directory plays its part, but only to 
make still more evident the need of a strong hand to cut 
the social cancer to the roots and save the body national. 
The Eighteenth of Brumaire ungloved that hand. Bona- 
parte is in the saddle. He crushes the mob and brings 
France to order. As First Consul he reconstructs society 
and the State, and after centuries of deficits surprises the 
nation with a surplus revenue. He inaugurates an era of 
vast public improvement, gives France its legal wonder — 
the Code Napoleon — and bids reason pull down its blood- 
spattered images and hearken to the voice of the Church 
again. Then follows the empire and the overturning of 
the thrones of Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the 
Italian principalities, and the quakings in the houses of 
Hapsburg, Hohenzollern, and Romanoff. Only England 
trembles not, and her mighty exertions save her only be- 
cause she has three men — Pitt, Nelson, and Wellington — 
while France had but one. "Waterloo crushes the Corsi- 
can, but not until he had been used to teach the common 
people their power and make impossible the continued 
exercise of the old power of the kings. Look at this 
man, mighty in shame and in honor, so great as to "em- 
barrass God,"* and behold in this maker of France and 
map-maker of Europe what a man can do! 

Thirteen American colonies "are, and of right ought to 
be, free and independent States;" that as such they may 
form a nation that shall assume for God and humanity the 

* Victor Hugo Les Miserables. 




GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

"Providence left him childless, that his country might call 
him father." — H. T. Tuckerman. 

" If among all the pedestals supplied by history for public 
characters of extraordinary nobility and purity I saw one 
higher than all the rest, and if I were required at a moment's 
notice to name the fittest occupant for it, I think my choice 
at any time during the last forty-five years would have 
lighted, and it would now light, upon Washington." — William 
E. Gladstone. 



The Builder of Nations. 21 

control of this new land. But who shall lead them to 
the freedom they demand ? From Virginia he comes with 
the words of Patrick Henry burning in his soul. Bunker 
Hill and the capture of Fort Ticonderoga have shown 
the temper of the patriot steel, and on June 15, 1775, 
by the Continental Congress, "the man who had saved 
the wreck of Braddock's army was called to build a 
nation. " * He did it. Against foes abroad and cabals at 
home he kept the torch of freedom blazing, and after 
eight years of war, years that tested the full strength of 
his character as few men in history have been tested, he 
received the sword of Cornwallis — the Old World's sur- 
render of the New to itself! The war ended, the victori- 
ous leader set himself to the still greater task of merging 
into one nation these conflicting States. It was a task 
that tried his soul, but he succeeded, and this land of 
great States, yet a nation one and indivisible, sends forth 
from her peerless capital, named with his great name, a 
cry to all the earth: Look on him, our Washington! and 
behold what a man can do ! 

The land of Washington is in peril. The fires of an 
awful wrong have so roused the passions of one section of 
a great people that they cannot see their shame, and the 
dread of war or the loss of gain have made poltroons of 
their Northern brothers. Four million shackled slaves 
lift their plea for the God-given right to the ownership of 
their own flesh, and a nation cries aloud for a preserver. 
The South offers Clay, but he is a failure. New England 
presents Webster, but he plays the slave. The Keystone 
State gives Buchanan, but he proves a coward. The West 
offers Douglas, but he is without decision on the very 
question that is boiling the national caldron. Then from 
the people comes Lincoln, the rail-splitter. The man and 
the hour have met. Yet treason prospers, armies are de- 

* Ridpath, History of the United States. 



22 The Eternal Building. 

feated, friends become enemies, jealous nations vent their 
spleen, papal benedictions hurry toward supposed victors, 
the end of the nation of Washington seems nigh, and all 
is wrong along the Potomac. Alone, in the midst of 
darkness and rending tempests, the rail-splitter continues 
to chop wood. He gets on his knees to do it, and prom- 
ises God that he will use war to bring freedom to the 
slave. Slowly, then, out of the wreck he picks men who 
will do his bidding, and armies that will follow worthy gen- 
erals wherever they dare lead them. The scene changes. 
Treason trembles. Armies and ironclads are victorious. 
Friends become obsequious. Nations fawn. The pope gets 
red in the face. The Proclamation of Emancipation sets 
the liberty bells ringing from the Penobscot to the Golden 
Gate, and the Hallelujah Chorus rolls from the throats of 
jubilant freedmen from the James to the Rio Grande. 
March with the millions of the chief cities of the East, and 
look upon the silent face of the best friend the Southland 
ever had. Think whence he came, and what he was, and 
what he did. Stand in awe before that most precious clay 
that man ever bore to the tomb, clay that enshrined the 
soul of the noblest American, Abraham Lincoln! and, 
standing there, realize anew what God can do with a man. 
Yes, men are the builders of nations. Time would fail 
us to call the roll, for there is Charlemagne, the builder of 
the holy Roman Empire; Peter, the builder of Russia; 
Gustavus Adolphus, the builder of Sweden; William the 
Silent, the builder of Holland; Victor Emmanuel, the 
builder of Italy; Bismarck, the builder of Germany; Diaz, 
the builder of Mexico; Mutso Hito, the builder of Japan. 
Every nation has had its master builder. 

The Builder of Science. 
Now let us tack our ship of thought a bit. Man is not 
only the builder of nations; he is also the builder of science. 




GALILEO. 



He beheld the universe swinging in a pendulum. 

" When science from Creation's face 
Enchantment's veil withdraws, 

What glorious visions yield their place 
To cold material laws ! " 



The Builder of Science. 23 

A teacher of monks looks up at the stars until they talk 
to him, and he throws away the astronomic misinformation 
which has been the accumulation of five millenniums of 
philosophy, and startles the world with the doctrine that 
the earth " do move ! " Copernicus gives astronomy a new 
foundation on which Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo rear 
the enduring structure. Lippershey, the optician of Middle- 
burg, contrives a glass by which the apparent size of objects 
is increased or the objects brought near. The philosopher 
of Padua grasps the idea, and gives the telescope to the 
world. This man Galileo has already knocked the props 
from under the Aristotelian system of philosophy, as Co- 
pernicus did from the Ptolemaic astronomy, by his demon- 
strations of the laws of motion and the discovery of the 
law of the pendulum. Now he turns his telescope toward 
the heavens, and men stand aghast as he dares to affirm 
that Copernicus was right. The earth does move! And 
more — there are spots on the sun! Jupiter has moons! 
The Milky Way is a storehouse of stars ! Of course they 
told him he lied; that he had spots on his eyes and 
moons in his head; but there was the telescope! They 
could see for themselves if prejudice would let them look. 
Though it died hard and made Galileo and many more 
men of the new way miserable in the dying, the old 
system had to give up the ghost. Modern science went 
marching on. 

Then came Kepler. The old astronomy said that those 
celestial bodies which did move moved in circles. Kepler 
tested the theory and found it false. How, then, did they 
move ? He bade Mars tell him. Night after night, year 
in and year out, he raced around the heavens with this 
ruddy star. Day after day he toiled over his figures. At 
last Mars spoke. Observation and figures tallied. The 
planet's path was an ellipse, with the sun at one of the 
foci. It was so of the earth. It was so of all the planets. 



24 The Eternal Building. 

It was the law of the universe ! Man had climbed up to 
the stars and discovered their paths. More — man was 
thinking after him the very thoughts of God! and now 
learned the courses that from eternity God had marked 
out for the stars. 

The orbits of the planets were discovered, but what 
held them to their course ? The north stretched out over 
an empty place, and the earth hangeth upon nothing,* but 
how was all sustained ? There came a tiny Christmas 
baby to an English widow's home. The love of mechanics 
was in his blood, and he gave his life to figures. One day 
an apple fell, as a thousand million apples had fallen in pre- 
ceding years. Why did it fall ? Not all the world could 
answer; but this man would be answered, for, answer him 
that, and he will tell you the law of the stars. The answer 
came. Out of his mind where the secrets of God were 
hiding he brought it forth. The apple fell because the 
earth attracted it and pulled it by unseen strings to itself. 
Was it so of the stars ? Did they attract each other ? fall 
toward each other ? yet were by this same attractive force 
exerted on every side held to their courses through the 
world-filled space ? It was true. 

" Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night. 
God said, ' Let Newton be,' and all was light."f 

In his book he wrote the rule: " Every particle of matter 
in the universe attracts every other particle with a force 
varying directly as the product of their masses, and in- 
versely as the square of the distance between them. "J 
This is the law of universal gravitation — the law that 
once grasped beholds God immanent in all his works. A 
Ruler in his universe, his hand on all the levers — and 
makes known the rule by which he holds all the suns in 
his hands. This the law that makes known the glorious 
truth that 

♦Job 26. 7. tPope. X Newton, Principia. 



The Builder of Science. 25 

"The very power that molds a tear 

And bids it trickle from its source, 
That power preserves the earth a sphere 

And guides the planets in their course." * 

There is a doctor in England who knows more than 
Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen, and proves it by over- 
turning their much-worn theory of nearly stagnant blood, 
air-pipe arteries, and a pervious, motorless heart, and 
teaches that the heart is an untiring engine that sends the 
blood surging through veins and arteries; and the theory 
of the circulation of the blood, by the acceptance and use 
of which modern physiology has wrought its wonders,rings 
the name of Harvey in the ears of the world. 

To-day the earth is full of electric wonders. They 
speed us from home to work and from work to play. 
They light our streets, illumine our harbors and mines, 
and brighten our churches and homes. They hatch our 
chickens, and cook them too. They play our pianos and 
print our books. They belt their mighty power to our 
multifarious machinery and carry our thoughts with more 
celerity than moves the light, over mountain and plain 
and across river and ocean, from the world's end to the 
world's end. It is a deadly force; define it, explain it, no 
man can; yet we have made it our slave. We know it is 
twin to the lightning, if it is not the lightning. Who but 
a man would dare run up a rod into the heavens and say 
to this dazzling destroyer: "Come, gather thyself on my 
arm, and I will lay thee in the ground, where thou shalt do 
no harm, or string thee on my wires, that ye may aid me in 
my mastery of a world? " Who but a man would dare do 
this ? Yet just this is what has been done by the race of 
men who spell their conquest with the names of Stephen 
Gray, Franklin, Galvani, Faraday, Ampere, Siemens, 
Wheatstone, Henry, Morse, Jablochkoff, Edison, Reis, 

♦Rogers, " On a Tear." 



26 The Eternal Building. 

Bell, Preece, Elisha Gray, Thomson, Tesla, and Ront- 
gen. 

Men are the builders of science. All the secrets that 
proclaim themselves in the ear of the world in the click of 
the telegraph, the ring of the telephone, the hollow hum 
of the graphophone, the whir of the dynamo, the whistle 
of the locomotive, the groanings of the donkey engine, the 
whiz of the trolley car, the swirl of the screw propeller; 
all the secrets that flame before us in the brightness of 
burning petroleum and gas, blinking arc and constant in- 
candescent; all the secrets that have blessed the race in 
the gift of anaesthetics and the new surgery it has sum- 
moned into the world; all the secrets which in the realm 
of pure thought have increased our knowledge of the cos- 
mos and the ego; all the secrets that have made the world 
smaller and man the more its master, yet made God larger 
and the universe more wonderful — all these secrets have 
been fathomed by the brain of man, and prove the majesty 
and power of this expression of the workmanship of God. 

The Builder of Religion. 

Men are the builders of nations. Men are the builders 
of science. Men are also the builders of religion. 

There is a Land of the Sunrise — though for that matter 
the sun rises everywhere — but thus men call it. It was a 
land in need of a man. ''The world had fallen into decay, 
and right principles had disappeared. Perverse discourses 
and oppressive deeds were waxen rife. Ministers mur- 
dered their rulers, and sons their fathers."* Then came 
Kung,the Master, and, " frightened by what he saw, under- 
took the work of redemption." f Though of the proudest 
lineage in the land, he became a teacher. But few accepted 
his teachings. Men did not care to be reformed. Given 
official station, Kung made the state he governed a model, 

* Religions of China. t Mencius, B. C. 371-288. 



The Builder of Religion. 27 

but the nation had no desire to copy. The emperor re- 
fused to be converted, and advised the sage to bate a little 
the proclamation of his principles. ''A good husband- 
man," replied Confucius, "can sow, but he cannot harvest. 
An artisan may excel in handicraft, but he cannot provide 
a market for his goods. And in the same way a superior 
man may cultivate his principles, but cannot make them 
acceptable. " It was well said and won him many converts, 
but the times that were out of joint refused to be set right 
by him, though they could not stop his quill. Wandering 
about, in part voluntary and part forced exile, he wrote 
his celebrated Analects and Treatise on Filial Duties; and 
when he died at a good old age, leaving the State uni- 
formed, he left these books and a devoted band of disciples 
who loved them to build on the foundation he laid a little 
religion of morality that has saved China's millions from 
more deadly paganism while compelled to wait on a lag- 
gard Christianity to tell them the story of the cross. 

The century of Confucius gave to India Gautama, the 
Buddha. Though we combat the remnant of his religion, 
and find that in his life for which we grieve, yet as we look 
back upon him and see him in the setting of his times, and 
behold his intense love for humanity and his willing sacri- 
fice of all things men count dearest in his quest for truth, 
we are compelled to own him a most extraordinary man. 
" Except Jesus Christ alone, there is not among the found- 
ers of religions a figure purer or more touching than that 
of Buddha. His constant heroism equals his conviction; 
he is a finished model of all the virtues that he preaches; 
his self-denial, his charity, his unalterable sweetness, seem 
not to fail him for a moment."* Siddharta was the son 
of a petty Hindu king, and from his youth was possessed 
of that unrest of soul that heralds discovery of truth. At 
twenty-nine he made what his followers termed "the Great 

* Barthelemy St. Hilaire. 



28 The Eternal Building. 

Renunciation," when, exchanging the robes of a prince for 
the garb of a beggar, he forsook palace and wife and the 
child he feared he loved too well, and as a penniless stu- 
dent went the round of the teachers of Brahmanism to 
learn the meaning of the Vedas. Still unsatisfied, he ex- 
iled himself for six years to the jungles and sought by 
every device of asceticism and self-mortification to com- 
pass the truth of life. But though he reduced his daily 
allowance of food to a single grain of rice, truth was not 
thus to be won. Gautama was ready to give up the quest 
and return to his palace, when one day, as he sat beneath 
the Bo tree, the truth burst in upon him. All his unrest 
was but the offspring of his desires. Crush these, master 
appetite, curb lust, be good, and do good, and peace would 
come, for the world would be to him what he was to him- 
self. This was his own putting of it in the song he then 

sang in his soul : 

' ' To cease from all sin, 

To get virtue, 

To cleanse one's own heart — 

This is the religion of the Buddhas." 

There was no God in it, and its end was only Nirvana; 
but there was no caste in it, and it was infinitely better 
adapted to the life and need of India than the prevalent 
Brahmanism. To Benares he went. For nearly a half 
century he preached his new religion, and it won the day. 
" Rajah after rajah declared against the old and for the 
new. The times were ripe for such a movement, as they 
were in the Roman empire when unbelief in the old gods 
and consequent popular immorality gave rise by reaction 
to the elevated Stoicism of Epictetus and the Antonines; 
as they were in Europe in the sixteenth century, when the 
degeneracy of the monks and priesthood was the chief 
factor in rousing the popular conscience to clamor for a 
reformation and in giving momentum to the new move- 



The Builder of Religion. 29 

ment, especially in the purer north."* The religion of 
Gautama has spread to China and Japan, and though in 
the march of time Brahmanism has sucked out of it much 
of its vitality, it yet stood for centuries as a moral uplift 
to the people of the lands to which in the providence of 
God it came. Its supreme weakness was its failure to 
recognize a supreme Being, and because it lacked this 
foundation the building of Buddha, majestic as it was for 
the age in which it was conceived, has never been able to 
maintain its walls, yet in it behold what a man can do. 

A fisherman is hailed from his nets. The friendship of 
the Nazarene transforms his life. Then when the Master 
has ascended into the heavens, leaving but a few score 
puzzled, disheartened, powerless disciples, the fisherman 
appears as leader. The whole band go to prayer — even 
though they had not been bidden to do so — they would 
have known naught else to do. They join their faith to 
claim, for whatever it may mean, the fulfillment of the 
promise left them by their Master. Faith is honored. 
Concord receives the benediction of the Eternal. The 
tongue of fire descends. It falls upon the heads and 
burns into the lives of men, and man is endowed and pan- 
oplied with the power and glory of the Spirit of all grace. 
The fire burns. The spirit of proclamation is upon them, 
and Peter speaks. It is the voice not only of a man who 
has talked with God, but of a man to whom God has talked 
and given a message ; a man in whom God now dwells, 
that through him he may shake hell and run a course of 
precious stones around the still low walls of Zion. The 
words of this man are the sword of the Lord. They smite 
sin and probe the putrid wounds of many for the entrance 
of cleansing, redeeming blood. It is a sermon about 
blood. They, the multitude, who said that he, the fisher- 
man, was drunk; they, though they were scribes and 

* Grant, Religions of the World. 



30 The Eternal Building. 

Pharisees, priests and rulers, had shed innocent blood. 
Their hands were red with it, their nation was cursed be- 
cause of it, eternity should forever stand aghast at their 
crime, for they had by wicked hands crucified and slain 
the Lord of Glory. Yet that blood would avail for them, 
for it was shed for the remission of sins, even for theirs, 
his murderers! "No wonder they fall on their knees; no 
marvel that they call with awestruck tones, 'Men and 
brethren, what shall we do to be saved ? ' Look ! there is 
a man prostrate on the ground. Apostles pray around 
him, and soon uprises the victorious shout, 'Jesus saves! 
Jesus saves! ' and the first convert won to Christ by man's 
preaching shouts his great redemption. What joy came 
to Peter that blissful moment! What increase of faith to 
those who had tarried long for some sign from God ! But 
see! there falls another; two are saved! Shout, Peter! 
There is another; three are saved! Shout, ye twelve! 
Thirty saved ones are lifting praise to God! Shout, ye 
immortal one hundred and twenty! Look how thy num- 
bers are increased; three hundred souls are saved! Shout, 
shout, ye expectant earth! The day of God has come; 
three thousand souls are saved! three thousand sinners 
have become saints to-day! three thousand who were 
chained to sin have burst their bonds and have now be- 
come the sons of God ! This is the pentecostal spectacle 
which inaugurated the triumphs of the soldiers of the 
cross."* Thus was a Church born in a day, a religion 
built up by the voice of a man who dared to stand amid 
the fire of God and declare the vice of a world. 

Then came the great tentmaker. God built this man 
for his time. He was born a citizen of the greatest empire 
in the world. He was educated in the philosophy of the 
most cultured race of perhaps any age. He was trained 
in the ways of the people who were the guardians of the 

♦Lemmon, Better Things for Sons of God. 



The Builder of Religion. 31 

one revelation which Jehovah had made of himself. The 
inscription on the cross of the world's Redeemer was writ- 
ten in letters of Greek and Latin and Hebrew — culture, 
power, religion — these three national excellences merged 
in Saul of Tarsus and equipped him for his work. Smitten 
red-handed in sin by the Pentecostal power, the scholarly, 
highborn Pharisee went down in the dust of the Damascus 
road, and at noonday, above the splendor of the sun, be- 
holds his vision of the Saviour, and his birth and his cul- 
ture and his religion are there consecrated to the service 
of him whom he had despised. The twelve win converts, 
the converts others, but none can so tell the story of their 
conversion, much less declare the philosophy of the won- 
derful transformation in their characters, that the world 
must listen. Rationalizing Greece mocks at the resurrec- 
tion; imperial Rome scoffs at the life that renounces the 
world; Jewry derides the cross — it is a rock of offense. It 
is the opportunity of the ages, and the man of the new 
name grasps it. At Damascus, at Athens, at Jerusalem, 
at Rome, before the twelve, before the mob, before Felix, 
before Festus, before Agrippa, before Caesar, his exordium 
was always the same — the story of his conversion: the 
light, the voice, the blindness, the consecration, the trans- 
formation, the gift of a Gospel, and the appointment to pro- 
claim it. His auditors might explain all this to him if 
they could, but as for him, he believed it to be the work 
of God. He silenced the laughing Greeks by the question 
to which they could give no reasonable answer: " Why 
should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God 
should raise the dead ? " * To the scoffer of Rome he de- 
clared that the world was renounced ; that the body of sin 
be destroyed ;f that henceforth they should not serve sin; 
but being led by the Spirit of God, by whom they were 
filled, they might prove themselves the sons of God. J 

3 * Acts 26. 8. t Rom. 6. 6. % Rom. 8. 14. 



32 The Eternal Building. 

Earth exchanged for heaven here. A march out of the 
hovel of self into the palace of God. Earth renounced for 
heaven gained ! To the Jews he opened their own Scrip- 
tures, proving from them that " Christ must needs have 
suffered, and risen again from the dead, and that he was 
Messias."* Thus he discomfited the heady enemies of the 
Gospel; thus he put words in the mouths of the newborn 
sons of God with which they could rout their persecutors; 
and with an organizing skill that was second only to his 
marvelous ability in the statement of the truth of God he 
established churches, evolved order out of confusion, and 
fashioned for the new Church a discipline that saved her 
from many errors. When at last God said, "It is enough," 
and the headsman of Caesar released his spirit, Paul left as 
his monument the sublimest literary legacy of the ages, 
and a Church — a religion — that bore in every feature of its 
doctrine and government the marks of his mind and heart 
and hand. 

Steadily brilliant and still more brilliant grew the light 
of the Church that rose above that One Foundation on 
which Peter and Paul had builded, until at length the 
standards of the universal empire were lowered before a 
great king that he might replace their eagles with the 
cross. But with that pomp there entered poison that went 
not out of the blood of the Church for a thousand years; 
poison that dimmed the light and blackened the walls 
and well-nigh destroyed the structure. There are bacilli 
that will only thrive in poison; it was so in the Church. 
There were men and there were errors that throve only 
because of the poison that entered in the days of Constan- 
tine, and though many a good man had risen, eager to see 
the healing of the Church, they had not lived to see the 
desire of their souls. Then arose the Monk of Witten- 
berg with his hammer and his theses. That hammer 

* Acts 17. 3. 




MARTIN LUTHER. 



"Without a Luther, a Washington and a Lincoln would 
have been impossible." — George L. Wellington. 

" Had there been no Luther, the English, American, and 
German peoples would be thinking differently, would be act- 
ing differently, would be altogether different men and women 
from what they are at this moment." — Froude. 



The Builder of Religion. 33 

drove the first nail into the coffin of the recreant papacy. 
That hammer woke the slumbering fires of discontent 
from the Tiber to the Tweed, and from the last monastery 
of Prussia to the palace of Charles the Fifth. It nerved 
the Protestant nobles at Augsburg to stand up and be 
counted for the faith they held dear, and to contend 
against powers and principalities and spiritual wickedness 
in the highest places for the right to look into the face of 
God and ask pardon and receive blessings without the 
mediation of Virgin or priest. It was no child's contest. 
There were giants in those days. Not even Goliath of 
Gath was more defiant than many a champion of the 
cause that for a thousand years had been at work on its 
entrenchments. It was a long contest, and the master 
builder had many wise and doughty helpers. The struc- 
ture was scarce complete when Martin Luther passed to 
his reward; but the building went on. Melanchthon, 
Zwingli, Okolompad, Calvin, Knox, Farel, Latimer, Rid- 
ley, Cranmer, and many whose names are written only in 
that book of martyrs that is treasured in the home of God 
toiled to lay on the stable courses. It rose in Germany. 
It towered over all Holland. It went to the end of the 
north in Scandinavia. It filled all England. It made 
glorious the name of Scotland. It endured in the north 
of Ireland. It made an annex of America, and laid the 
foundations of the great republic. The isles of the sea 
had waited for it, and there many of its loftiest pinnacles 
rise. And though they triumphed not, none toiled harder 
or more gloriously on the building than the Huguenots of 
France. The might of man has lifted many wondrous 
structures in the world, but it has been given to few to 
rear so vast and beneficent a structure as the stately edi- 
fice of Protestantism. And this Protestantism that is in 
the command of the world to-day is the monument to 
the labor and daring of Luther. 



34 The Eternal Building. 

Once more we will take a life to illustrate our premise. 
Religion, like everything else in the world, has its ups and 
its downs. The man of Epworth was born when the faith 
of the fathers had ebbed low indeed, and when men who 
lived the life of saints were as rare in the land as when 
Elijah sought the cover of the juniper tree. It would be 
difficult to paint too black the darkness of the Church in 
England in the first half of the eighteenth century. 
Leighton described it as a fair carcass without a spirit. 
The clergy were in love with the world and had no "con- 
ception of the sanctity of their office or the responsibility 
of spiritual care for the common people."* Vice went 
unrebuked. The poor were forgotten. The word of the 
Lord was of use only in debating circles. Then, from the 
taproom of an alehouse, came Whitefield. The coals from 
the altar of God that burned in his heart met those in the 
heart of Wesley, and the fire blazed. From end to end of 
England it ran as they preached of death, judgment, and 
the wrath to come, of purity, holiness, and peace with 
God. To the poor they gave the Gospel. To the im- 
prisoned they so ministered as to reclaim many. To the 
outcast they came as the ambassadors of God, offering a 
free and full salvation. It was a revival of religion, pure 
and undefiled and full of the Holy Ghost. It was the 
salvation of England. It awakened the State Church 
from its blighting lethargy, and put Nonconformity on 
the road to its triumph. The fire spread. England 
could not contain it. It ran through Wales and Scotland 
and Ireland, and leaped the sea and kindled revival fires 
from Boston to the Carolinas. Then Wesley proved his 
apostleship. The awakened were organized, the organi- 
zation being at once unique and well adapted to the need; 
organized better, more stable than he knew, and gave the 
world one of its mightiest conquering Churches. But 

* Hurst, History of the Christian Church. 



The Wonders of the Builder. 35 

great and majestic though Methodism be as a monument 
to the memory of this unwearied toiler, his monument is 
more than Methodism. It is a Christianity that knows 
the Holy Ghost. It is a Christianity that manifests the 
philanthropy of God in its interest in and care of the poor 
and unfortunate. It is a Christianity that knows and 
utilizes the power of the lay ministry. It is a Christianity 
that gave birth to the stupendous missionary enterprises 
that are the astonishment of the world. Truly to a very 
few does the world owe so much as it does to John Wesley, 
and few lives in all history depict more powerfully than 
his the omnipotence of a man aroused. 

Have I made clear what a man can do ? what a builder he 
is ? Towering monuments, splendid capitals, magnificent 
cities; conquering nations; world-circling, star-finding, 
space-annihilating, machine-inventing, disease-mastering 
sciences; soul-enlarging, life-ennobling, God-proclaiming 
religions — all these are the work of his brain and hand. 
Mighty builder! But though we look on all this, yet we 
have not found the greatest building in the world. The 
greatest building in the world is not of man's making, 
though man has much to do in the polishing or marring of 
its perfection. It is the work of the Master Builder, whose 
throne is in the heavens, whose workshop is the universe, 
and whose handiwork are the suns and worlds of the 
infinite spaces. The artifex of all these majestic erections 
which we have found in our quest, he himself is what we 
seek. Man is himself the Greatest Building in the World. 

[The Won ders of the Bui lder J 
His body. There is no mechanism so perfect. It is the 
marvel of those who give their days and nights to its 
study. It was fashioned by the fingers of God for Adam 
after a plan wrought out from all eternity as affording the 
best form in which divinity should become incarnate when 



36 The Eternal Building. 

in the fullness of times Jesus Christ should manifest in 
the flesh all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Jesus 
came in the fashion of a man, but man had been so 
fashioned because in the thought of God just such a 
human form would best serve him in whom we should 
behold "the only begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth." It was a body that could endure the stress 
of the wilderness and the fatigue of daily toil, that was 
fitted to take on the amazing glories of the transfigura- 
tion, that could suffer without murmuring the agonies of 
the cross and after death walk the earth again, and in the 
chariot of the clouds carry up from Olivet the first fruits 
of them that slept. "The destiny of humanity is to be 
traced as we see the ascending glorified body of our Lord, 
who is able to change the bodies of our humiliation and 
make them Mike unto his own glorious body, according to 
the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all 
things unto himself.' His brethren are no more made like 
him in being permitted to wear just such a body as was 
prepared for him from all eternity than they are in being 
destined to become like him when they shall ' see him as 
he is.' The risen body of Christ now glorified confers on 
all partakers of flesh and blood a patent of nobility. It is 
in his risen and glorified manhood that Christ exercises the 
mighty power of subduing all things unto himself and 
changing our bodies until they become like his glorified 
body."* 

Wonder no longer at the majestic beauty, matchless 
symmetry, and perfect mechanism of the form you bear. 
It has eternity for its inheritance. In some way, we know 
not how, there is that in or of our bodies that is to endure 
beyond the grave; that shall give tabernacle to our glorified 
spirits and afford a basis for our recognition of ourselves 
and of our fellows in the future life. No wonder, then, 

* Hendrix, Methodist Review, May, 1897. 



The Wonders of the Builder. 37 

that our bodies are so marvelously made; their potency is 
eternal. 

His mind. What a reach it has ! Where have we not 
been since we set out on this quest ? We have looked 
into the face of Pharaoh and read the decrees that 
have made the new Japan. We have talked with men of 
every century, and it has been real to us because with the 
mention of their names our minds have presented us with 
pictures of their times. We have stood one moment upon 
the heights of the Himalayas and looked upon the teeming 
millions of the East, and the next have been speeding up 
the Sierras to watch the sunset at the Golden Gate. We 
have marched out with Moses past the pyramids, trod 
with David to the conquest of Jerusalem, fought with 
Alexander at Arbela, kept our powder dry with the "Iron- 
sides " of Cromwell, been an American on guard in the army 
of Washington, and marched in the grand review that 
proclaimed slavery dead and the Union saved in '65. 
We have made the tour of the globe in thirty seconds, with 
stopovers in all the capitals of the Old World and the New. 
The Andes and the Alps, the Tiber and the Thames, the 
Amazon and the Orinoco, east, north, south, and west, their 
gates have all been opened, and we have passed in to refresh 
ourselves at the table of the world. Such prospects have 
the windows of the mind. In it the story of the ages is 
stored, and with it, more swiftly than flashes the light or 
ticks the telegraph or runs the cablegram, we speed from 
land to land, unlock all palaces, peer within the tomb of 
any king, and see again the past of the race. More; with 
this mind we grasp all the wonders that fellow-minds 
discover. Indeed, there is a sense in which a thing can- 
not be said to have been discovered until it is so grasped 
by the discovering mind that it can be presented intelli- 
gibly to others. Thus every discovery of science be- 
comes the mental possession of the entire race, rich and 



38 The Eternal Building. 

poor alike. With this mind we roam back through six 
thousand years or six thousand ages, according to our 
theory, and stand when and where there is no world, and 
behold at the fiat of the Eternal the world begin to be. 
With this mind we look through the future until, in the 
clash of tumbling worlds and piling suns and reeling 
heavens, a city that hath eternal foundations is let down 
from God out of heaven. With this mind we enter that 
city, tread its golden pavements, sail on its crystal sea, 
sing in its glorious chorus, shout with its ransomed in- 
habitants, crown its Lamb as King, and look into the face 
of Jehovah to receive his commands for our eternal 
service. So vast is the range of the mind. Who but the 
Infinite could have fashioned it ? What but eternity offers 
it due scope ? This is the mind that fills the skull of a man, 
and with such a body and such a mind man might well 
stand forth as the greatest creation in the world; but 
there is more. 

His soul. It is the Divine within him. The body is a 
temple; the mind is the altar; the soul is the priest who 
dwells in the temple and officiates at the altar. Temple 
and altar are for the priest, not priest for the temple and 
the altar; and if the temple be so glorious and the altar 
so magnificent and both so marvelous, simply that they may 
the better serve the priest, how mighty that priest must be ! 
What is the soul ? No man knoweth, if by such knowl- 
edge you mean ability to draw a diagram of it, or give its 
dimensions, to tell its weight; but if you will ponder the 
words that tell of its introduction into the human form, 
you may get answer enough to satisfy all reasonable ques- 
tioning. The body of the man had been fashioned. I 
care not whether you look upon it as the face of the 
Genesis story pictures it — motionless upon the grass; inani- 
mate; heart perfect, but acting not; blood present, but 
coursing not; nerves in place, but tingling not; flesh 



The Wonders of the Builder. 39 

chiseled, but marblelike; mind-house — brain — shelved with 
cells to hold the library of all knowledge, but tenantless; 
or whether you take it to be the transitional offspring of 
the ancestors of apes, heart working, blood coursing, 
nerves twitching, flesh hot, and a dozen cells in its brain 
rattling with lonesome ideas — the thing before you is the 
same, a form, a house, a prepared habitation, but not a 
man; not a master of the form, an aroused gatherer of 
stores for the vacant cells of the brain-house. And now 
we must take the Genesis story at its face meaning if we 
would learn the one reasonable description of which 
science or philosophy knows to-day of the change wrought 
in the inanimate clay, or the not-man missing link. When 
God had formed this thing — remember I care not for the 
present purpose how; whether by a touch of the dust or a 
process of evolution — when he had formed this body, with 
its heart for pumping life currents; this mind, with cells 
for storing life's commands — then God "breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." 
He was now not clay, he was now not ape, he was now 
man, and he was man because he was possessed of a soul 
that was within him by the inbreathing of God. The 
soul, then, is that part of us which is God within us, and 
this every man, saint and sinner alike, possesses, for it 
takes this to make a man. Body is not man, mind is not 
man, soul is not man; body and mind animated, pos- 
sessed by soul — that is Man. The elements of the body, 
even the stuff of which the marvelous structure of the 
mind is fashioned, all these are earthy; they are temporal; 
the soul is not earthy, it is eternal, for it is God. When 
we realize what the soul is we are not surprised at the 
value which, in the revelation God has made of himself and 
of his will concerning us, he has set upon it. Grant, for 
purpose of illustration, that man's body could be all we 
find it now, without connection with a soul, and that 



40 The Eternal Building. 

man's mind might have all its present grasp on truth and 
range of acquisition, though unvitalized by a soul, what 
would be the result of death to them? Both are of the earth, 
and to the earth, no matter how much the body may have 
mastered it, the body must return; back into the dust, no 
matter how precious the store it may have accumulated — 
though it evolved the Meca,7iique Celeste, like Laplace; or 
built up in its brain, to find it afterward in space, a gi- 
gantic planet, as did Adams; or manifested the wealth of 
its treasures in immortal verse, like Shakespeare or Milton 
— must all mind go. Though it has winged its flight 
from time's end to time's end, fathomed all mysteries and 
uncovered all secrets, there is naught for it now but the 
rot of the grave. It would be like the burning of some 
superb library. A building, the pride and wonder of a 
city or a nation, with its priceless store of wisdom, blazes 
away into the original elements of which its granite and 
paper were composed, and leaves naught but a heap of 
refuse. 

Such would be the fate of man's body and man's mind 
without the gift of a soul. But the purpose of God 
allows no such waste. Into this prepared body and pos- 
sible mind God enters, an eternal tenant, one whom no 
fire can destroy, no earthquake engulf, no sea drown, no 
grave bury, and the coming of this tenant works wonders 
in the future of the habitation. The soul's payment of 
rent for its lodging for a brief measure of time is the 
grant of eternity to some measure of the habitation. The 
soul makes use of the body to manifest itself; by the body 
the soul is known to other souls, and so much of it as 
will continue this identity is gifted with eternity, assuring 
recognition beyond the grave. The soul makes use of the 
mind to express its thought to other souls and to store its 
gathered knowledge for eternal use, and so tried and well 
trained a servant is not discarded at the grave, but passes 



The Wonders of the Builder. 41 

with the soul to dwell in "the mansions not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." Thus earth is linked with 
heaven. Man becomes one with God. A body fashioned 
by the skill of God, with a mind mighty enough to con- 
tain the thoughts of God, becomes the dwelling place of 
the life of God, and because God cannot destroy himself 
man becomes indestructible, eternal. But now enters 
another factor that we must notice. This most wonderful 
of all the creations of God, this man, looks up into the 
face of the Eternal and recognizes his Creator, beholds 
him whose offspring he is, and dares to say, "Thou art 
my Father! " This relationship God acknowledges, and 
replies, "Thou art my child." The child asks, " Father, 
what wilt thou have me to do ? " and the Father answers 
thus and so. The man says, "I will," and we note that 
with gladness he goeth to do his Father's will. Then 
comes another man. He, too, talks with his Father. To 
him, as to the other, God says do thus and so, and to our 
consternation this man defiantly straightens himself and 
answers, ' l I will not. " 

What manner of creature is this that dares say to him 
who formed him, "Thou art not my master?" Why 
does God give to the creature such power ? Why form a 
man with such liberty of daring? Christian philosophy 
will give you satisfying reasons. Here we may treat only 
the fact. Man can do this. Man with the breath of God 
within him may — sad be the truth, many do — say just 
this. The creature becomes the opponent of the Creator; 
the thing formed dares to enter into contest with him 
that formed it! 

What is the cause of this ? Sin. Man is not now what 
God made him, what God meant him to be. He has used 
his marvelous endowment to rebel against God, and the 
fever of that rebellion corrupts the race. Sin is in the 
world; sin is in the race; sin is in every man born of the 



42 The Eternal Building. 

race into the world. There was a flaw in the life of 
Moses; there was vice in the record of David; there were 
folly and shame in the doings of Alexander; there were 
warts upon the good name of Cromwell; there was some- 
thing not to be imitated, something that was hideous, in 
the life of every man of noble fame that we have named 
or could name. None, no, not one, was perfect. Not 
one has been able to show us just what a perfect man 
could do nor what he would be like. Sin — rebellion 
against God, rebellion on the part even of those who, 
knowing the awfulness of rebellion, have pledged obedi- 
ence — has put a blight upon every character. 

Is there no remedy for sin ? Is there nothing that will 
eradicate this terrible destroyer ? Yes. Remedy is pro- 
vided in the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ. 
And there can be no character that will endure, no man- 
hood crowned with supreme success, without owning the 
need for and receiving the application of this remedy. 
Herein is the folly of all attempts to build character to 
supreme excellence without religion, without the religion 
of Jesus Christ, which is the religion of the perfect man. 
Sin must be taken into account, and a method of character- 
building that fails to consider sin and make known the 
way to overcome it is unworthy of attention; the struc- 
ture which it rears shall crumble. No system that con- 
siders man only as a body and mind is adequate. It 
does not deal with all the facts. It neglects the greater 
and the essential part of man. The soul must be consid- 
ered, and in the development of enduring character the 
soul is the most important, for it is the master of body 
and mind. 

Character is the sum of the whole man. Character 
may be Satanic or it may be Godlike. It will be one or 
the other, according as the soul rebels against or is 
obedient to its Creator. The difference between Nero 



The Wonders of the Builder. 43 

and Paul, between Tetzel and Luther, between Catherine 
de'Medici and Margaret of Navarre, grew out of the differ- 
ence in their relation to God. There has been a perfect 
Man in the world, and he was perfect in his character 
because he was perfect in his relations to God. Sin had 
no dominion over him. He was the master of himself. 
Sin did attract him, else he was not "tempted in all 
points like as we are," he were not perfect man; but 
though attracted, he looked through sin to its heart of 
brazen defiance of God and turned from it with loathing. 
He dared to look the master of hell in the eyes and say: 
"Thou art false. I will not keep company with you;" and 
he said that by the exercise of the very same endowment 
that was exercised by that other man who looked into the 
face of God and said, "I will not obey thee." It was 
thus he manifested the grandeur of manhood, thus he 
proved the ability of man to conquer the enticement of 
evil, for as he conquered every man may conquer. 

In right relation to God — body, mind, and soul in har- 
mony with the divine idea — recall what this Man became. 
No light that beats upon a throne beats one half so 
fiercely as did the eyes of hate gleam on him, yet when 
he was on trial and his entire life was up as evidence 
the judge's verdict was, "I find in him no fault at all." 
And though enemies gnashed their teeth in rage, they 
knew it was the utterance of the truth. Look upon the 
portrait of this spotless character, who bids you live as he 
lived, copying him for your own perfection : 

" He was faultless, without dullness; patriotic, without 
partisanship; courteous, without hollowness; dignified, 
without stiffness; delicate, without daintiness; calm, 
without stolidity; enthusiastic, without optimism; guile- 
less, without childishness; frank, without effusiveness; 
chivalrous, without rashness; aggressive, without pug- 
nacity; conciliatory, without sycophancy; prudent, with- 



44 The Eternal Building. 

out time-serving; modest, without self -depreciation; gra- 
cious, without condescension; just, without severity; 
lenient, without laxity; flexible, without vacillation; con- 
servative, without obstructiveness; progressive, without 
precipitance; patient, without stoicism; persistent, with- 
out perverseness; imperative, without imperiousness; de- 
cisive, without bluntness; heroic, without coarseness; 
self-conscious, without self-conceit; hopeful, without 
dreaminess; sad, without gloom; sympathetic, without 
connivance; generous, without prodigality; frugal, with- 
out churlishness; appreciative, without flattery; stern, 
without censoriousness; indignant, without bitterness; 
forgiving, without feebleness; sociable, without famil- 
iarity; reserved, without moroseness; self-denying, with- 
out asceticism; unworldly, without unwisdom; conscien- 
tious, without fanaticism; trustful, without improvidence; 
diversified, without contrariety — in a word, perfect, without 
unnaturalness." * 

Can you measure to such a marvel ? In large measure, 
yes. Can you so live that this will describe your char- 
acter ? This is the possibility set before you. This is 
the Ideal. None lower will satisfy. Remember this is 
not the portrait of a God. This is a picture of the char- 
acter of a man; such a character as heaven and earth, 
God and your conscience, call upon you to rear in your 
life. Just such is the greatest building in the world. A 
perfect man. What else did Pilate say ? There was ad- 
miration in his eyes, awe in his tones, wonder in his heart, 
and a quaking in his soul, as, standing before the multi- 
tude, he suddenly cried, as with index finger he pointed to 
the Nazarene: "Ecce Homo ! Behold the Man! " 

" My God, I heard this day 

That none doth build a stately habitation 

But he that means to dwell therein. 

* Boardman, The Problem of Jesus. 



The Wonders of the Builder. 45 

What house more stately hath there been, 
Or can be, than is man ? to whose creation 
All things are in decay. 

" Man is all symmetry, 

Full of proportions, one limb to another, 

And all to all the world beside ; 

Each part may call the farthest brother, 

For head with foot hath private amity, 

And both with moons and tides. 

" For us the winds do blow, 

The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow. 

Nothing we see but means our good 

As our delight or as our treasure, 

The whole is either our cupboard of food 

Or cabinet of pleasure. 

" Since then, my God, thou hast 

So brave a palace built. O dwell in it, 

That it may dwell with thee at last ! 

Till then afford us so much wit 

That as the world serves us we may serve thee, 

And both thy servants be." * 

* Herbert, The Temple. 



THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF THE 
BUILDING. 



The old doctrine that men at birth are like a sheet of white paper is not 
quite true. They are like such a sheet written on with invisible ink ; and 
though there is nothing to be read there when they are born, or for a time 
afterward, yet when they are held to the fire of circumstances there begins to 
be developed in them a writing that they did not write. Who did write it ? 
Their fathers ? Their mothers ? Yes, in part. Who else ? Their grand- 
fathers and their grandmothers, and their fathers and mothers, running back 
through three or four generations. In other words, the individual man comes 
into life as a seed which has in itself the effects of the foregoing conduct of a 
successive line of ancestors. — Henry Ward Beecher. 

It is a far fall from Mozart to Offenbach, as far as from Handel to a drunk- 
ard's debauched song. Yet it is music all the way. What makes the differ- 
ence ? It is the old difference, and the persistent one. Is the land of St. 
Cecilia a divine kingdom or a diabolic ? To possess it and enjoy it must we 
serve God or serve the devil ? To win and wear its sovereignty must we fall 
down and worship, with drunken catch and harlot's song and impious mockery 
of purity and truth, Belial and our own lusts ? Or is it a high kingdom kept 
by our Father, and to be given by him to the labor and study and reverent 
care of his children ? A kingdom where the eternal harmonies seek utterance 
at the hands and in the voices of men ; a kingdom whose air is thrilled once 
and again with notes lost from the harp strings of the angels, dropped echoes 
of the chants from the choirs invisible ? — Bishop Hugh M. Thompson, The 
World and the Man. 



CHAPTER II. 
THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF THE BUILDING. 

A Good Animal. 

THE surest foundation of a perfect life is a sound body. 
A large part of the raw material for a noble character is 
a man's physical structure. The first thing needful to be a 
first-class man is to be a first-class animal. The man 
whose character is to shine for God needs a good body. 
Health is a requisite of wholeness. Pascal was guilty of 
teaching that " disease is the natural state of Christians," 
but this libel on a loving parent has been banished to the 
limbo, cluttered with much other mediaeval nonsense. It 
is not alone true that disease is contagious; health is also 
contagious, as the physicians of our day affirm. Tears 
draw tears, but much quicker will one laugh stir another. 
Out of all the terror and squirming of our craze about 
microbes we are emerging with a firm grasp of the fact 
that there are more microbes conducive to health than to 
disease. They fight for our health. The world is a san- 
itarium. If through heredity or contagion or neglect 
we fall victims of disease, it affords innumerable natural 
asylums established from the creation of the world for 
our cure. Dr. Matthews says: "The atmosphere we 
breathe is an exhalation of all the minerals of the globe, 
the most elaborately finished of all the Creator's works — 
the rock of ages disintegrated and prepared for the life of 
man. Draughts of this are the true stimulants, more 
potent and healthful than champagne or cognac, 'so 
cheap at the custom house, so dear at the hotels."'* 

* Getting On in the World. 
49 



50 The Eternal Building. 

God intends us to be healthy, for God intends us to be 
good-natured. A cross-tempered person is as much de- 
formed as a cross-eyed one. Success is only a question 
of right relations with other men, and you cannot maintain 
right relations with other men if you are always acrid and 
vinegary. I was born just in time to see one of those old 
"bitter cups," the great stock in trade of the children of 
Galen a hundred years ago. It made bitter anything put 
into it; then you drank the potion — lo! you were well. 
It turned the stomach even of the microbes, and they fled. 
Well, so will men run from you, detest you, refuse to 
foster your ambitions, if your body is but a bitter cup 
that sours your soul, and you are everlastingly melancholy, 
morose, taciturn, and woeful. To be other than this you 
need to be well. It is as hard to smile when your head is 
wrapped up in rags because of neuralgia as it is to crook 
your rheumatic knees for family prayers. Ill health leaves 
its mark on nearly all the work the sick one performs. 
Pessimism is very largely but the nom de plume of dys- 
pepsia. You inhale its feculent breath alike in the litera- 
ture of fiction and of fact. When Cicero had the dyspepsia 
he recognized it at once, and had the sense remaining to 
wipe his quill and run for his life to Greece. Making his 
home in a gymnasium, he submitted to its rigid treatment 
for two years, then went back to Rome, perfectly cured, to 
pulverize Cataline and make Antony quake in his toga. 
A dyspeptic would never have won such a triumph. 

What is the origin of the bickering and anger, the impa- 
tience and harshness, that curse the intercourse of daily 
life ? Is it not ill health ? I would not for a moment 
allow that an invalid has a right to be a perverse, fretful 
crank, but though he has no right to be such, the fact is 
too sadly true that in nine cases out of ten he is so, and 
as such we have to deal with him. He looks upon life 
through blue glasses, and everything is off color and dis- 



A Good Animal. 51 

torted. Such a man can never grasp a right view of life. 
A pin prick will be a sword thrust; the sting of a thorn like 
the fires of Pluto. Such a bundle of tangled nerves as his 
respond to the music of the (Eolian harp of life ? Never. 
Here and there a soul may rise above its woes and crush 
back its groans, and sing with Sydney Smith, "I have 
gout, asthma, and seven other maladies, but am otherwise 
very well," but for every such an one a thousand will con- 
tinue their whine until the clock ticks their end. 

And this is true, though we have record of the noble 
lives and mighty achievements of many who have labored 
through weary years with weak and diseased physiques. 
In the book of the world's immortals many such have writ- 
ten their names. Paul's name stands at its head, though 
the thorn constantly pricked his flesh ; Julius Caesar placed 
his there, though he never planned a battle without an 
attack of epileptic fits ; Pascal's is there, though an in- 
valid from eighteen; Milton's is there, though blind for 
many years; William the Third's is there, though from 
birth to death the man whom Louis XIV declared was 
more to be feared on the night of a defeat than on the eve 
of a victory never knew a well day; Nelson's is there, 
though he was little and lame ; Lawrence's is there, though 
compelled to weigh the daily morsels of food on which he 
sustained his life; Parkman's is there, though for fifty 
years he could not use his eyes for more than five minutes 
at a time, and then only at the cost of pain; Beethoven's 
is there, though his dull ears caught no sound of his own 
matchless harmonies; but these are the exceptions, these 
are the Sydney Smiths that surprise and ennoble the race. 
Napoleon, illustrative of so much both for good and ill, 
may well serve us here. At the first he was the man of 
iron; four hours of sleep sufficed him, and in each of the 
remaining twenty he could do as much work as the ordi- 
nary man in a day. But there came a break at last to this 



52 The Eternal Building. 

Sturdy constitution, and at Dresden, in 1813, it doubled 
him in his tent with cramps when he should have been in 
the saddle; and this weakness alone saved the defeated 
allied army from extermination, which would have meant 
the end of the united opposition of Europe. He was no 
longer the man of iron when he returned from Elba, and 
it was his physical deterioration more than the coming of 
Blucher or Grouchy's failure that lost him Waterloo. Never 
had he planned more masterly — all was perfect save the 
physical machine to execute the plans. No wonder that 
he himself declared that the first requisite of good general- 
ship is good health. 

Almost without exception the great prizes in every field 
of life's labor are won by those of sturdy thews, hardened 
sinews, and vigorous pulse. It is useless to hunt lions 
with a shotgun — it takes a good chunk of lead to bring 
the monarch of beastdom down. All things, like the 
prize in endowment insurance, come to the man who en- 
dures. Stalwart Soul in Sturdy Body are twins that will 
master destiny. The soul of ./Eschylus was shrined in a 
body that was the pride of the Greeks — a body with which 
he dared lead them in the battle at Salamis. Chaucer, his 
brother bard of a later age, could let go his quill and 
tighten his fist for a knockdown blow. Burns at the 
plow acquired not only immortal thoughts, but strength 
to postpone for years the penalty of his later debauchery. 
When nature builds statesmen she gives them a big equip- 
ment of animated clay as well as a commodious cranium. 
Washington stood six feet four, and scarce knew the feel- 
ing of pain. Webster was a giant. It was the same with 
Clay, Calhoun, Greeley, Garfield, and Blaine. Lincoln, 
the prince of them all, was of heroic mold — muscle that 
made him the strong man of his day, and health that 
withstood the terrible strain of four unparalleled years. 
Across the sea it is the same. The sturdy Burke at sixty- 



A Good Animal. 53 

six still mastered the British Commons. Brougham's ac- 
tivity was the wonder of his age. The race has never 
come nearer to perpetual motion. Once he worked for 
six full days — one hundred and forty-four hours — without 
sleep, finished his case, and then ran down to his country 
home and slept from Saturday night to Monday morning, 
returning to his work as bright as ever. It became pro- 
verbial in the England of his day, "The king never dies, 
and Brougham never sleeps." The physique that stood 
such strains enabled him to hold on to the reins of power 
after a generation of punier men were in their graves. 

Palmerston at eighty mastered the empire as if he were 
a youth fresh to the lists, and said that a man was at his 
prime at seventy-nine. Gladstone at eighty was the Grand 
Old Man of his race. Bismarck at the same age could still 
break in the colts who came to him to be made emperors; 
and Leo XIII looks into the face of his ninetieth birth- 
day with the eyes of one of the keenest diplomats of 
Europe and with scarce a peer in the long list of the popes. 
The clergy are a long-lived class, and so largely because 
of their pure habits, care of their persons, and training of 
their bodies. Most of the Protestant reformers were sturdy 
fellows. Luther could have played pitch and catch with 
most of his opponents could he have met them singly. 
Knox, before whom all Scotland, from queen to peasant, 
trembled, had a form as stalwart as his speech. Latimer, 
like our own Cartwright, could lay a man on his back and 
keep him there until he had swallowed his argument. 
Adam Clarke, as a lad, had a fondness for rolling huge 
stones, and thus prepared himself to roll the great thoughts 
of his manhood over many of the fine theological lawns of 
his adversaries. Beecher was a majestic animal — no racer 
was ever cared for more tenderly than this prince of 
preachers cared for his splendid physique, and thus the 
history of his conquests cover a third of a century. Phil- 



54 The Eternal Building. 

lips Brooks stood head and shoulders above his fellows, 
both in his boots and in his manhood, and was in every 
way a magnificent specimen of a well-made man. 

How to Become a Good Animal. 

To gain health and maintain health — that is, to have 
and to keep a sound body — becomes, then, the first great 
work in character-building. How gain health ? One wise 
man has said, " Begin twenty years before the child is 
born." Dr. Holmes, I think it is, is responsible for 
the sage expression, "If you would have a healthy child, 
begin with its grandparents." This is true. A man must 
be born well if he is to have a fair start in life. The law 
of heredity is a fact that must be faced, and a law that 
must be heeded if we are to have a sound race. Pedigree 
is the important question to-day in every form of stock- 
raising save the human. The racer and the pointer, the 
cow and the sow, must present a pedigree or we reduce the 
price. Hen's eggs are worth two dollars apiece when the 
pedigree is satisfactory. I have seen ten thousand dollars 
paid for a stallion long past his racing days because the 
blood in him had raised even his own good pedigree to a 
higher notch. Stock raisers believe that temper as well as 
speed and productiveness are hereditary, and refuse to 
breed from mean and tricky animals. The same law rules 
man. It is the law of God. It has its place in the Deca^ 
logue, and it must be obeyed or the race suffers. Every 
child born exhibits its parents or ancestors to the world. 
Sins against the body, mind, and soul are punished by 
their penalty being visited upon the children unto the third 
and fourth generation, and thus reveal to the world the 
crime even of those long buried. The cemetery is often 
the truest historian. Look at those long rows of tiny 
mounds — often five and six in one lot — what do they say ? 
"We were born well? " No. " We were born accursed." 



How to Become a Good Animal. 55 

It is no " happen so " that the mother of Nero was a mur- 
deress, that the mother of Charles IX was a living imper- 
sonation of the mother of evil, that Lord Byron's mother 
was proud, ill-tempered and violent. Parentage tells in 
temper and disposition, but even more does parentage tell 
in the physique bequeathed. But this is fiendish! No. 
It is righteousness. 

Writes a physician: "Asa lad I used to feel rebellious 
when I thought that the sins of the fathers were visited on 
the children unto the third and fourth generation of those 
who hated God — it seemed a deliberate and cruel curse. 
One scarcely expects to learn Bible exegesis from anatomy, 
but it was through the study of anatomy that I learned the 
real meaning of the last part of the second commandment. 
One day there was brought into the dissecting room a 
1 subject ' which was eaten, flesh and bones, by a shameful 
and loathsome disease such as is frequently passed down 
from father to son. In an instant it flashed across my 
mind that this was no deliberate and cruel curse, but a 
wise and kind lesson in regard to one of the laws of our 
being, and from my twenty-second year to this I have had 
no further difficulty with that commandment."* 

Very truly has this same physician written: "Heredity 
is a solemn fact and an inexorable factor in human weal 
and progress. It is an unwelcome truth to very many, 
because it ' tries the reins and searches the heart ' of in- 
dividual life as nothing else can do. It is, in its way, a 
sort of religion, too, and it is a preacher of righteousness; 
for the individual must hold himself back from all in- 
temperance in the use of mental and physical faculties, 
and keep himself in harmony with nature's laws, if he 
would not have his sin find him out and appear in mental, 
moral, or physical unloveliness or deformity in his 
descendants." 

*Pomeroy, Ethics of Marriage. 



56 The Eternal Building. 

But remember this law works for good as well as for ill. 
Aye, works more strongly for good, and when you work 
with the law you work with God. Be not cast down if you 
have the curse of a weak, sensual, drunken, or diseased 
ancestry. Don't rest under the curse. Fight yourself up 
to health. Recognize your danger, and fence against it in 
every way. The world has many known to fame who have, 
thus, with the power of an unbending will, said to the 
past, "Down! I am your master." And God knows 
many more who have enrolled their names on his book of 
conquerors by their conquest of the evil tendencies and ap- 
petites bequeathed them by their ancestors. Do this for 
your own sake, that you may be a blessing and not a curse 
to yourself. Do it for the sake of those who are to follow 
you. By the gate of parentage you came into the world — 
that gate you are to open to others. Let them come with 
blessings in their blood and bones as well as in the soul 
God gives them. The mother of Washington was a robust, 
pure, devout woman of loftiest character. The mother of 
the Wesleys was all this, with the added equipment of suf- 
ficient executive force to rule a state. The mother of 
Napoleon was as rare a genius in Corsica as was her son 
in France. The fact that many fathers are so manifestly 
reproduced in their sons has given us the saw, "He is a 
chip off the old block." Of fathers as well as mothers 
this poetic thought holds true : 

" The mother in her office holds the key 

Of the soul, and she it is who stamps the coin 

Of character, and makes the being who would be a savage 

But for her gentle cares a Christian man." 

To be born well is first; to stay well is next, and very 
largely a thing of personal control. Health must be 
earned; it cannot be bought. Health is the music of a 
sound body. It sings, but you do not hear it any more 
than you do the music of the spheres. It is to be en- 



How to Become a Good Animal. 57 

joyed. "No man is in true health who cannot stand in 
the free air of heaven, with his feet on God's free turf, 
and thank his Creator for the simple luxury of physical 
existence." * Can you do so ? If not, whether it seems 
slangy or classic, the command for you to heed is, "Get 
there!" A sound body is the fruit of sunshine, good air, 
curbed appetite, and plenty of exercise. The lives of 
men are thus very largely in their own hands. 

Live, walk, rest, on the sunny side of the street. Build 
or rent your house there, no matter what the extra cost. 
"Shut the door to the sun, and you will open it to the 
doctor," and he is one of those folks of whom Moliere 
said they pour medicine about which they know little 
into bodies of which they know less in order to cure 
disease about which they know nothing at all. Consult 
them immediately, however, when you are out of order, 
but see that you don't get out of order very often. The 
sun is first physician to his majesty Humanity. A mi- 
crobe has just been found that makes its home in human 
blood and feeds on the red corpuscles. It multiplies by 
the million in the darkness, and dies in the light of day. 
Live in the sunshine! 

Build up a strong bellows. Have a good air tank. 
The deep-chested fellows are the ones who make them- 
selves heard in the world. Lung capacity can be in- 
creased. Thousands of people have expanded their 
chest measure from two to eight inches by the simple 
method of continued deep breathing, with or without 
the use of tubes; and it is within the limits of truth 
to say that each inch added years to their life as well 
as fitted them for better work. With all thy getting 
get air. Live in it all you can. La Harpe used to say, 
"When my head gets fatigued I put it out of the window 
for a while." Treat yourself as you do your clothes; 

* T. W. Higginson. 



58 The Eternal Building. 

hang yourself up somewhere for an airing every little 
while. Ventilate your dwelling if you have to smash the 
windows. Use any number of blankets, but keep the 
window of your sleeping room open from New Year's 
morning to New Year's eve. Sleep. Find out how much 
of it you need to work well — not to be lazy — then get 
that much if you have to stay in bed half the day. Grant 
said he could do nothing without nine hours' sleep. Sleep 
is the soothing syrup that every member of the body 
loves; heart, muscles, and nerves cry for it. 

Don't eat everything you see, nor half of what you want. 
People have that tired feeling because they are perambu- 
lating garbage bins. Zangwell tells of a fat girl, a solid 
reality, whom he had seen with his own eyes, whose obes- 
ity became such a burden to her that she sought a physi- 
cian to rid her of some of it. He prescribed minutely. 
She was to eat dry toast, plain boiled beef, etc., and 
return in a month and report reduction. The month 
passed. She returned, but the office door was scarce 
wide enough for her entrance. The doctor was dumb- 
founded. "Did you eat what I told you?" "Reli- 
giously." His brow wrinkled. Suddenly he was inspired. 
"Anything else?" "My ordinary meals ." She deserved 
to be fat. 

The ostrich is charged with swallowing about everything 
it can get hold of; here is a human ostrich. According 
to the British Medical Journal, Owen Williams died at 
the London Hospital on April 24, 1895, while undergoing 
an operation. His stomach contained forty pieces of 
cork, thirty pieces of doubled tinfoil, nine pennies, one 
iron ring, twelve pieces of clay pipestems, one lead bullet, 
one rubber ring or bottle stopper, three pieces of leather 
an inch square, another piece of leather nine inches long 
with a hook at each end, a string a foot long with tinfoil 
and corks attached, some more string, cotton, newspaper, 




JAMES ABRAM GARFIELD. 

" First, be a man." — Rousseau. 

He had the physique of a Greek god. 

"But nature, with a matchless hand, sends forth her nobly born, 
And laughs the paltry attributes of wealth and rank to scorn ; 
She molds with care a spirit rare, half human, half divine, 
And cries, exulting, 'Who can make a gentleman like mine?'" 

— Eliza Cook. 



w 



How to Become a Good Animal. 59 

and a few other small things. The fool died. You call him 
a fool, but he may be a near relative of yours. Corks are 
about as wholesome as some things we greedily swallow. 
There is a sense in which the stomach is the man; ruin it 
and you ruin him. We dig our graves with our teeth; 
eating too much, eating too fast, and, above all, eating 
what we cannot assimilate. There are pie and cake and 
beef and bean slaves just as truly as there are slaves to 
whisky, beer, wine, and tobacco, and the effect of this 
slavery upon the stomach is nearly if not quite as injurious. 
To think well you must digest well. There have been 
philosophers in the world who have regarded the stomach 
as the seat of intellect, and genius and good digestion as 
convertible terms. This is not so ridiculous. The brain 
often gets the credit for a triumph won by the stomach. 
Eat what is good for thee, no more. Bishop Peck once 
overloaded his stomach with mince pie, and very justly he 
had a night of it. When the doctor was called in the bishop 
gave him one of his humerous squints and remarked, 
"Doctor, I'm not afraid to die, but I'm ashamed to." 

Exercise, exercise, exercise — this is the making of a 
body. The better the body the better the man and the 
better the work the man can perform. Beecher likened a 
strong intellect in a weak body to a Krupp cannon 
mounted on a rickety carriage that collapsed at every 
shot. What a caricature is a pair of spindle shanks creep- 
ing around under the weight of a Websterian cranium! 
Men, like trees, reach for the sun; so the fathers did not 
dare declare that height was the projection upward of the 
prince of darkness, but with them width and weight were 
considered sure signs that total depravity was bearing 
fruit. Emaciated shadows, lanky dyspeptics, study-dried 
skeletons — on these the wings were expected to appear; 
but the ruddy, full-chested, whip-muscled heavy weight 
— look out for the horns! That day is past. Gone with 



60 The Eternal Building. 

the skin and bones in which it gloried. The sickly 
skeleton who won the prize at college won none after 
graduation, but blockhead Walter, who loved the back 
of a wild horse, runs off a story for all the world every 
two months, and runs away with a baronetcy and gold as 
well. Sir Walter wrote Waverly mornings, and chased 
hares afternoons; the other fellow had gone with his 
prize to the grave and oblivion. 

The ancients were wise. They made of themselves 
magnificent animals. The Greeks deified health and 
worshiped her as Hygeia, and making the development of 
a stalwart physique the object of all their system of body 
culture, with its games and festivals, they presented the 
world with a race of Apollos. The victories that made 
forever famous that sturdy little land were practically won 
in the Olympic, Isthmian, Pythian, and Nemean games, 
even as Waterloo, in the opinion of Wellington, was won 
on the cricket and football fields of Eton and Rugby. 
Only men of stalwart build could stand the strain of the 
shield-to-shield and hilt-to-hilt contests of those days. As 
you get back to the men who live nearest to nature, with 
the least of the artificial in their nourishment, you find 
that nature builds men of majestic physiques. 

Many English public men have declared that the vast 
empire that has been won for the crimson cross is but the 
result of the physical training of her lads, that has given 
them a bulk and muscle and power of endurance that the 
men of no other nation equal. The race " whose morn- 
ing drumbeat, following the sun, and keeping company 
with the hours, circles the earth with one continual, un- 
broken strain of the martial airs of England, " rules by 
brawn fully as much as by brain. God can use a strong 
man. All need not be as strong as Samson, but no 
man goes through life without meeting many an oppor- 
tunity for the exercise for good of a strong arm and a 



How to Become a Good Animal. 61 

supple body. There are strong men still. Not giants, 
but ordinary men who by steady training have made the 
most of every muscle and cord and who perform marvel- 
ous feats. Sandow's manly beauty makes him a favorite, 
but he is not without peers. Good old Samson and even 
mythological Hercules would find these fit for their 
strength. The Canadian marvel, Louis Cyr, has put his 
finger through a ring and lifted 555^ pounds clear of the 
floor with that one finger. He has gripped 987 pounds 
with one hand and lifted it clear of the floor without the 
aid of his knees. Then he used both hands, and up came 
1,897^ pounds. Taking hold of the chime of a barrel 
with the fingers of his right hand, he has placed that bar- 
rel filled with 433 pounds of sand and water on his shoul- 
der. Picking up a 97^-pound dumb-bell in his right hand 
and an 88-pounder in his left, he has raised them simul- 
taneously to his arm's length at right angles with his body, 
and, dropping these, lifted a 131^-pound dumb-bell to the 
same position with his right hand and held it there for 
five seconds, and then brought the weight to his shoulder 
before setting it down. Using both hands, he lifted a 347- 
pound bar-bell from the floor to the shoulder, and then 
held it up at his arm's length above his head. In England 
they put a platform on his back, loaded it with 3,655 
pounds, and he walked away with it. Then they hitched a 
team of horses weighing 2,000 pounds to him, and laid the 
whip on them, but Cyr didn't care to go just then, and that 
number of the queen's horses were not sufficient to make 
him go; he just braced himself to stay where he was until 
he got ready to go the other way, and then those horses 
felt drawn to follow him. At Boston, in May, 1895, he 
succeeded in raising 4,300 pounds live weight. 

Charles A. Sampson, of Detroit, is the other contestant 
for Sandow's laurels. He excels in harness lifting, by 
which he has raised 4,008 pounds. At London, in August, 



62 The Eternal Building. 

1 89 1, Sampson put his body to the most terrible test of 
muscle-wrenching and strength-exhausting that a human 
being has perhaps ever undergone. These strong men 
seldom perform more than two or three of their hardest 
feats in any one day, but in response to a challenge Samp- 
son performed the following feats twenty times in one day: 
Lifting a 100-pound bar-bell with left hand, then a 200- 
pounder with his right, then a 160-pounder, followed 
by a 200-pounder with both hands; lifting a 320-pound bar- 
bell with right hand, and then with both hands, and then 
raising one weighing 1,202 pounds with both hands; 
breaking silver coins with his fingers, and breaking a 
short chain by a straight pull, bursting a double bracelet 
on either arm by the swelling of his muscle, and rending 
leather straps and chains by the expansion of his chest. 
Then as sort of sauce to all this he went through the 
manual of arms with a 160-pound bar for a musket. The 
total of his dead-weight lifting that day was sixty-one thou- 
sand two hundred and forty pounds, and this, of course, does 
not take into account the force exerted in breaking the 
chains and coins. This American Hercules is no giant; 
he is rather under-sized, being but 5 feet 7 inches in height. 
He weighs 175 pounds. Other measurements are as fol- 
lows: Neck, 17 inches; chest contracted, 39 inches; normal, 
43 ; expanded, 58; biceps, 19; wrist, 4^; forearm, i6j£; 
calf, 16; thigh, 26%. 

These men show the possibilities wrapped up in the 
human physique. Such feats will, of course, demand pay- 
ment from those who thus overtax their powers. The 
whole race is not thus to put itself on exhibition, but all 
the race should be aroused by such exhibitions to seek for 
sound bodies for themselves. The price these men paid 
was regular, systematic exercise and careful dieting. They 
did not become such animals in a day. Their strength is 
as the strength of ten because they take the exercise of 



How to Become a Good Animal. 63 

ten ordinary men. Exercise is nature's life-preserver. 
Develop yourself. Dr. Frank Hamilton said, "The best 
thing for the insides of a man is the outside of a horse." 
If you cannot afford the horse, then use your own legs. 
Never get too old to romp. Calisthenics are good, but they 
are but the shadow of the good to be secured from a good, 
genuine old romp. Never let your boys and girls get too 
dignified to romp. At least once a day take all the har- 
ness off — corsets included — and let them run loose like 
colts. The result will be health, and that is better than 
style, and is always in good form. You need not be a 
Spartacus or a Sullivan, but if you desire to be a first-class 
man and do such a man's work in the world, you must get 
the physical constitution to endure the strain. 

Remember your body is a temple for the dwelling of the 
Eternal Spirit. Perfect that body. It has cost God in- 
finite thought to make it. You may well pay a great 
price to perfect it. " Physically man is the summary of 
all the perfections scattered through the animal kingdom, 
of which he is the head. He represents in his body, so 
fearfully and wonderfully made, the different forms of ani- 
mal life which are below him. It would almost seem as if 
the Creator before modeling the human body had experi- 
mented on all conceivable adjustments of bone and muscle 
and nerves to obtain the best that was possible when he 
should come to make man. It is not strange that, as in a 
great masterpiece, we are reminded of the ' studies ' of the 
artist, so men find resemblances to the fish or to the higher 
forms of animal life which abound on the land when they 
study the human frame. They find seventy vestigial struc- 
tures in the human body. Eminent anatomists like Dr. 
Cleland have been compelled to say, ' Thus there is ana- 
tomical evidence that the development of the vertebrate 
form has reached its limits by the completion of man.' 
Nor have those who have made the nervous system a study 



64 The Eternal Building. 

been able to conceive of anything more perfect than our 
nervous organism. The proportion of brain to spinal cord 
rules the animal world, starting with the fish, with its pro- 
portion of two to one, until it reaches the mammal, with 
its proportion of four to one. Then, as if by a new crea- 
tive act in fashioning man's physical frame, the propor- 
tion becomes twenty-three to one. It is not believed that 
any substantial difference will ever be made to appear. 
The dome of the human skull, with its curve of one hun- 
dred and eighty degrees from front to base, expresses the 
mind of the Creator as to the completeness of man's frame. 
With expansion of height or width would come a curvature, 
or bending on itself, so that the base would be crumpled 
together while the roof is elongated. Abnormal develop- 
ment usually awakens great fear of attendant insanity, as 
a dwarfed brain is the badge of imbecility. Curving of 
the base of the skull involves a change in the position of 
the bones of the face which would require the cutting off 
of the nasal cavity from the throat. There is such adjust- 
ment as shows that God has in the human body expressed 
his last thought in matter. The Greeks, with their love 
of beauty, found its highest expression in the human form. 
They saw the ideal face divided into three equal parts by 
the line of the eyes and the mouth. They saw the ex- 
tended arms equal to the height of the entire body. They 
found such proportions as revealed the perfect harmony 
which is the essence of beauty, and that these proportions 
were not capable of disturbance in the interest of perfec- 
tion. The human form cut in marble by the Grecian 
sculptor has served as the model for centuries, and to main- 
tain these right proportions was ever kept before the con- 
testants in the Olympic games. To the Greeks there was 
but one word for both the noble and the beautiful. A 
noble man, a perfect man, was an harmonious man." * 

* Hendrix, Methodist Review, May, 1897. 



The Hand and Head of the Builder. 65 

The Hand and Head of the Builder. 

Be sure your body has a steady hand. To his marvel- 
ous hand man owes his mastery nearly as much as to his 
mind. We live by our hands. Few could earn their 
bread without them. The steady-handed man is the me- 
chanic who wins. The supple-handed man is the man who 
turns the key in the door of opportunity. Of what use 
are sharp tools, delicate instruments, cunningly contrived 
machines, without a steady hand to use them ? Every 
tool man's brain invents makes more necessary a delicate 
hand not only to put that tool together, but also to move 
it to its use. Old Galen's tribute still holds good: 

"The lion has powerful fangs and claws; the hare has 
swiftness of foot, but in other points is defenseless. But 
to man, the only animal that partakes of divine intelli- 
gence, the Creator has given, in lieu of every other form 
of natural weapon or organ of defense, that instrument — 
the hand; an instrument applicable to every art and occa- 
sion as well of peace as of war. Man therefore wants 
not a hoof or horn or any other natural weapon, inas- 
much as he is able with his hand to grasp a much more 
effective weapon — the sword or spear. . . . With his hand 
he weaves the garments that protect him from the sum- 
mer's heat or winter's cold; with this he forms the various 
furniture of nets and snares which give him dominion over 
the inhabitants as well of the water as of the air and 
earth; with his hand he constructs the lyre and lute and 
the numerous instruments employed in the several arts of 
life; with his hand he erects altars and shrines to immor- 
tal gods; and, lastly, by means of this same instrument he 
bequeaths to posterity, in writings, the intellectual treas- 
ures of his divine imagination." 

An anonymous writer has said of the hand: "When in 
good condition what a power it exerts! It conveys an 



66 The Eternal Building. 

ineffable language, which even brute animals understand. 
It menaces, invites, repels, or gives character and grandeur 
to the expressions of an orator. It is a hammer, a vice, a 
punch, a wrench, a lever, a pry, a force, and a mighty 
power by which the pyramids were reared, cathedrals 
called into being from the hardest quarries; and all that is 
amazing, surprising, delicate, or calculated to advance 
civilization in art, literature, and science is accomplished 
by those wonderful instruments — human hands. " 

The superiority of the hand over the other organs of the 
body has been declared by many for whom Professor Wilson 
thus writes: " The organs of all other senses, even in their 
greatest perfection, are beholden to the hand for the en- 
hancement and exaltation of their powers. It constructs 
for the eye a copy of itself, and thus gives it a telescope 
with which to range among the stars; and by another copy 
on a slightly different plan furnishes it with a microscope, 
and introduces it into a new world of wonders. It con- 
structs for the ear the instruments by which it is educated, 
and sounds them in its hearing till its powers are trained to 
the full. It plucks for the nostril the flower which it longs 
to smell, and distils for it the fragrance which it covets. 
As for the tongue, if it had not the hand to serve it, it 
might abdicate its throne as the lord of taste. In short, 
the organ of touch is the minister of its sister senses, and, 
without any play of words, is the handmaid of them all." 

Train your hand, then. The lenses of the great tele- 
scopes of the earth were perfected only by the regular 
constant rubbing day by day, month after month, of the 
human hand over the glass. You must rub the glass of 
the mirror of destiny with a trained and steady hand if 
you would ever see your face all shining in it. The un- 
steady hand will never long rule either the world or a 
dollar-a-day job. Our hands were made that with them 
we might fashion that matchless thing called success. 



The Marvelous Provision for the Body. 67 

Keep a clear brain in your cranium. Refuse to be 
muddled. Don't let passion make a fool of you. You 
must be clear-headed if you would seize opportunity by her 
front hair. Greatness is the seizure of the auspicious 
moment and making it do your bidding. In every great 
battle there is a crisis when the result hangs upon the use 
made of that moment by the opposing commanders. 
There are such moments in every man's life; you must 
be clear-headed to know them and to make the decisions 
that they demand. Hindsight never won a victory or 
made a famous speech or a brilliant mot. Had Webster 
been drunk when Hayne dropped his challenge, the great- 
est speech of the American Senate would have never been 
uttered, though Webster had been preparing for that 
speech for months. Dr. Holmes says: "Our brains are 
seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up 
once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into 
the hand of the Angel of the Resurrection. Ticktack! tick- 
tack ! go the wheels of thought. Our will cannot stop them ; 
they cannot stop themselves; sleep cannot stop them; 
madness only makes them go faster; death alone can 
break into the case, and, seizing the ever-swinging pendu- 
lum which we call the heart, silence at last the clicking of 
the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath 
our wrinkled foreheads." 

If for any cause that clock cannot tell you the time of 
day, no matter how suddenly you may ask it, you are lost. 
It may tick on, but every tick will be but a reminder that 
your opportunity came and you seized it not. 

The Marvelous Provision for the Body. 
The value of the human body is proved by the marvel- 
ous provision that God has made for its sustenance. 
"The history of the physical universe culminates in man, 
finds its interpreter and its interpretation in him. Never 



68 The Eternal Building. 

was the thought of man absent from her movements 
through Pliocene, Miocene, Eocene, Cretaceous, Jurassic, 
Triassic, Carboniferous, Devonian, Silurian, or Cambrian 
ages. ' In all her awful cosmic emotion to reach order 
and form it was the anticipation of man that moved her, 
for he it is at last that comes of it. So through all the 
course of her tumultuous history nature was pregnant 
with man.' The stars which sang together in the early 
morning of the world caught the inspiration which gave 
melody to their song from the thought of him." * 

We may well complement this thought with another 
from the same author: "The form of all continents and 
islands, the outlines of all seas and coasts, contain the 
idea of the human family. At a time, geologically about 
the same, the surface conditions of the earth were prepared 
for the advent of man. The great Himalaya Mountain 
range was lifted up to prepare an embosoming plain to 
serve as a cradle for the human race. The long chain 
of mountains running the whole length of the North and 
South American continents was raised to prepare ±he way 
for civilization on this side the sea. 'When the ocean beds 
were dug out and the waters called off from a part of the 
earth's surface ; when the mighty peaks and the majestic tur- 
rets of the mountain chains were lifted to the sky; when the 
encompassing atmosphere was filled with all life-replenish- 
ing elements and wrapped about all oceans and shores; 
when the poisonous forces destructive of man's life were 
locked up in soils and rocks;' when the meadows were 
sown with grasses, and the hospitable arms of the trees 
were loaded with fruit — then upon the earth, adorned and 
ready for his coming, man appeared." As another has 
choicely put it, " Man is the harbor where all the freight, 
started on its stormy cruise at creation, comes to shore." 

That the world is for man, and that it takes the whole 

* Lee, The Making of a Man. 



The Marvelous Provision for the Body. 69 

of it to satisfy his needs, is impressed upon us as we con- 
sider how much more varied and world-embracing are his 
desires than those of the animate world about him, and 
that the world constantly brings forth her products to 
gratify these desires. Give the king of beasts a few acres 
of Asiatic jungle and he will eat, drink, and reign content. 
The elephant will run trumpeting with delight if you give 
him but a mile square of African brush. Grant the cow 
an acre seeded down and she is in clover, and will grate- 
fully manufacture for you the most delicious nectar of 
nature. The robin and the linnet will sing their song if 
you give them a tree and a worm and a wee circle of air. 
The fish will disport itself in a little pool of the sea. But 
man cannot live in comfort unless the foods of all parts of 
the temperate zone are spread upon his table. For him 
the tropics must send their fruits and spices and the 
Arctics their oil and fat. The field must rear meat for his 
feasting, and the sea daily give of its teeming population 
that he may have dainty brain food. To cook his food 
the forests must fall and the mountains yield their black 
diamonds and the lightning part with its power. To 
shelter him other forests must live and grow and die, great 
hills give themselves to the kiln, and granite mountains 
be hewn asunder. Even the herbs that grow on the hill- 
sides and in the valleys have their tender ministry in the 
healing of man's myriad ills, and if you find poison in the 
minerals, you will find some day a need for it in the body 
of a man. 

Have you ever considered what is represented in a single 
meal that you enjoy ? That Pat may have even his simple 
bowl of soup a Texan steer must part with a shin, Ceylon 
must send him pepper, the South the barley or China the 
rice, Syracuse or Cracow the pinch of salt, neighboring 
gardens the vegetables, and nature the water. All this for 
a bowl of soup! but even more is needed, for it must be 



70 The Eternal Building. 

cooked and served. Jump from Pat's table to that of the 
average business or professional man, and behold how the 
ends of the earth are met together before your eyes. Ma- 
hogany from Honduras, linen from Erin, silver from Col- 
orado, ivory from Africa, flowers from the seed of all 
lands, macaroni from Italy, fish from lake or river or sea, 
beef from Texas, bread from the prairies that sweep from 
the Mississippi to the Saskatchewan, salt from New York 
or Russia, pepper from the East Indies, oil from Palestine, 
tea from China or Ceylon, coffee from Brazil, sugar from 
Cuba or Hawaii, fruits and nuts from Florida and Califor- 
nia and Brazil and Algiers, and the pick of the home gar- 
dens and dairies. Thus day by day we sit down at the 
world's table. Give thanks ! or go and live with the beasts; 
aye, sink lower, for the beast will bellow or neigh his 
thanks. 

Verily the world is man's and for man. It is not the 
1 ' vile thing" that it has been styled. It is the creation of 
God for the habitation, of man and the Creator has fashioned 
and stocked it for its purpose as wisely and wondrously 
as he has the matchless body of man. Man can only prove 
his fitness for a better world by a Godlike use of this. He 
is related to all the forces and growths and beauties man- 
ifested in the world, and to be a complete man, thoroughly 
furnished physically for every good work that man should 
do, he must make all these his servants. "Water from 
the world's skies flows through his veins to and from 
his beating heart. Trees and shrubs and herbs minister 
to his pleasure and his ills. Rocks and timber and steel 
lend themselves to his service for house, hatchet, or chisel. 
When he ascends sufficiently in the grade of civilization to 
give expression to his conception of beauty he finds the 
colors in the ores under his feet to embody his visions. 
Would he illuminate his humble home at night, there is 
the pine with its light-giving tar. Does he live amid the 



The Marvelous Provision for the Body. 71 

plains, where the pine does not grow, there is the ox with 
his tallow ready to be made into candles. Does he live on 
the coast, away from the ox or the pine, there is the whale 
with his oil. Does he want a better light than pine or 
tallow or oil can give, there are the coal beds, with their 
sunshine laid up for his use for thousands of ages. Does 
he wish to turn night into day, and make his streets glow 
with the radiance of the stars, there is electricity to be 
drawn from its wide, mysterious fields to serve his growing 
desire. Would he cross the sea, the winds lie ready to 
fill his canvas and draw him from continent to continent. 
Are the winds too slow, there is the heat, stored in the 
mountains, ready to move his engine and drive his wheel. 
Does he wish to make himself ubiquitous, and send a 
message across the sea before a ship could get out of 
port, there waits on him again the mysterious lightning."* 
Man does not come to his kingdom as the rest of the 
animate creation to theirs. There is vast use for that 
sound body, steady hand, and clear head before his kinship 
is clearly evidenced. The bird when it comes finds the air 
already under its wings when it would fly. From the very 
beginning the fish is in the element that answers to its 
fins, and which gives the food adapted to its life. The 
calf and the colt are on their legs and nibbling grass like 
experienced mowers a very few minutes after they are born. 
The lower animals find themselves from the beginning of 
their life at home in the world, and with feet, teeth, claws, 
wings, horns, or fins fight their battles and win their food. 
But they never learn any better way. The lion who beat 
down a famine-gaunt Hindu to-day did so in just the 
same way that his ancestors did before Noah took a pair 
of them into the ark. The beaver who yesterday felled his 
tree did so as the first beaver did millenniums ago. The 
bee that gathered his honey from the flowers of paradise 

*Lee, The Making of a Man. 



72 The Eternal Building. 

and stored it in a cell he had built for it among the trees 
of Eden, packed that honey away just as the bee in your 
hive packs honey away in the manufactured cell you fool 
him with. With the animate world below man it is always 
the same story not only from morning until night and 
from one day to another, but it is the same story, the 
same monotonous grind, from time's beginning to time's 
ending. But man puts the strength of his body to do the 
bidding of his clear head, and by his steady hands finds or 
contrives a better way of meeting the needs and doing the 
work of his life. Adam perhaps made his home in a cave, 
Cain in a tent, and man has marched up from that until 
now he invites you to call upon him in an Escurial, or a 
Versailles, or a Windsor, or a White House. Instead of 
wasting his strength felling a forest with an ax, he puts his 
hand on a saw, which he bids the steam drive for him, and 
down come the trees. Instead of the merciless backrend- 
ing of the flail, he sings a song as the iron teeth of the power 
thrasher break him his bread. Instead of the sling, every 
throw of which endangers the dislocation of his arm, he 
now but touches a trigger with one finger and his Krag-Jor- 
gensen shot speeds farther and with more certain execution. 
He has learned to make the forces that oppose him serve 
him. He lifts his sail in the face of a stiff breeze blowing 
eastward and commands it to bear him westward. The 
river current that denies him passage he utilizes to make 
him a ferry. The waves that threaten to swamp his craft 
he boils to give him steam to outride their fellows. The 
winds draw his water, the rushing currents saw his lumber, 
Niagaras but furnish power to drive his machinery, and 
the lightnings that would strike him dead he commands 
to make brilliant his streets, bring him the news from the 
ends of the earth, and shine on his paper while he reads 
the message. 

There are always new powers and secrets in the pro- 



Destroyers of the Building. 73 

vision of God for him when man knows what he wants and 
seeks for it. He becomes more and more the master as he 
puts forth his power to gain the mastery. God never dis- 
appoints the man who seeks to better the condition of the 
race by patiently learning how to conform to the laws of 
nature and presenting the race with some concrete expres- 
sion of his study or evidence of his conclusions. All that 
the intelligent study of the needs of men may declare to 
be essential to the complete and perfect mastery of the 
earth by man, all that will be found when sought for in 
God's provision for man. The flying machine will soar 
between the earth and the clouds as soon as man finds the 
right material for the construction of the machine. That 
material God has made; it is in the world; no doubt Adam 
had his hands on it any number of times; it will be found. 
It is by the reward of God to his search that man has 
advanced to the height where he now stands. By con- 
formity to God's laws and use of God's provision man 
has traveled a long way from the rude scythe to the mower 
and reaper, from the distaff to the loom, from the back of 
a donkey to the luxury of a palace car, from the dugout to 
the ocean-riding palace, from the signal fires to the tele- 
graph and cable, from the tom-tom to the organ. There 
seems to be no end to the progress of men of sound body, 
steady hand, and clear brain toward an ideal life even in this 
world, save the end of time itself. Ponder well, then, the 
value of your physical make-up. 

Destroyers of the Building. 
Here it would be pleasing to rest our study of the phys- 
ical side of character-building, but if what has been written 
proves the need of a sound and trained body as the basis 
for the erection of a noble character, and it is known what 
are the worst foes of such a sound body, steady hand, and 
clear brain, common honesty demands that those foes be 



74 The Eternal Building. 

uncovered, exposed, that he who would build well may 
shun them. It is right here, when we are considering the 
body, not when we shall give ourselves to the study of the 
higher expressions of the nature of man, that we must pay 
our attention to the question of amusements and appetites. 
Theater-going and gambling may offer some appeal to the 
mind and commit their greater wrong upon the intellect, 
but dancing and the appetites for intoxicants, tobacco, and 
opium appeal to the flesh. If they hurt the flesh, if for its 
good they are ruled out here, they must go without hope 
of return. They have no higher court in the nature of a 
man to which they may appeal. They are appeals wholly 
to the animal in man, and if they are shown to injure the 
animal, then their doom is pronounced. It may be dis- 
pleasing to some who are indulging their flesh in these 
things to have the mask torn away by the declaration that 
their appeal is not to the social or intellectual nature of 
man ; yet the declaration is none the less true, and can no 
more be controverted than it can be proved that the ap- 
peal of these things is to the aesthetic, moral, or religious 
nature of man. It is " beastly " to drink intoxicants. It 
is ' * beastly " to use tobacco. It is ' ' beastly " to use opium. 
It is "beastly "to dance. And in the use of this term 
"beastly," that may seem shocking and disrespectful to 
some, the fact is that the disrespect is to the beasts, for 
they will not use intoxicants, tobacco, or opium ; and the 
higher the beast advances in the scale, the less promiscu- 
ously sensual he becomes, and it is only the promiscuous 
sensuality that the dance allows, aye, fosters, that contin- 
ues its hideous propagation in the world. 

It is useless to attempt to treat these things with that false 
delicacy and fastidiousness that merely awaken evil imagi- 
nations instead of arousing fierce determinations to combat 
them in self and in others. Every one of these things has an 
unclean, iniquitous, devilish side, and no verbal perfumery 



Tobacco. 75 

is in place when the truth is to be told concerning them. 
The devotees of these things make the scene on which 
they ring up the curtain most fair; it is the duty of those 
who seek clean bodies for men to prove that there is 
something behind the scenes that is not so fair. Should 
this view behind the scenes appear like a vision of hell, 
remember I am not responsible for it. I did not put it 
there. The scenes are there to taunt me while they snare 
those I love. Certainly if I lift my voice against them, it 
would be folly, having begun, to leave my case half 
proven because of a prudishness that fears to state the 

facts. 

Tobacco. 

Sin is always foul. I can hardly conceive a more vile, 
foul, loathsome thing than a spittoon reeking with the 
filth fresh from the mouth of the tobacco slave. I would 
rather be a chambermaid charged with the removal of the 
slops of a hundred rooms than the chore-boy whose dis- 
gusting task it becomes to cleanse these receptacles of 
filth. When you deal with tobacco you deal with the cus- 
pidor, so now, if a stench should arise from these words, 
remember I did not fill the cuspidor; there is no use 
getting mad at me, for we have now to deal not only with 
the cuspidors, but with those who fill them. 

" Will you please look through my mouth and nose ? " 
asked a young man once of a New York physician. The 
man of medicine did so and reported nothing there. 
11 Strange! look again. Why, sir, I have blown ten thou- 
sand dollars — a great tobacco plantation and a score of 
slaves— through that nose." 

But serious as is the charge that can be proved against 
tobocco as a wasteful habit, as a foul consumer of the good 
money by which the user and his family might have had 
the advantages of a better home, a good education, the 
pleasure of travel, capital for the beginning or enlarge- 



76 The Eternal Building. 

ment of business, and the increased self-respect that all 
these things bring, there are more serious charges, and to 
these we must pass. 

The use of tobacco destroys good manners. " Do gentle- 
men smoke in France?" some one once asked Gouverneur 
Morris. ii Gentle?nen^ sir, smoke nowhere!" You apolo- 
gize for having eaten onions, as your wife will apologize 
when the house smells of boiled cabbage, but you make 
no apology for this that you carry about with you and 
blow in the faces of the defenseless people that you meet 
on the street or elsewhere. A gentleman is always con- 
siderate of others. This is the test of good breeding and 
good manners, and when the user of the weed is tried by 
this test he is found to be no gentleman, no matter how 
costly his clothes, tobacco, or meerschaum. He does not 
possess sufficient manhood to pay the price of being a 
gentleman — self-denial. Only a perfumed bath and a 
new suit of clothes would enable him to pass as a gentle- 
man at such times as he keeps the weed out of his mouth, 
for the stale odor of the best cigar is as foul as the worst 
when carried around in the user's clothes. 

The smoker emphasizes his lack of manners by his 
indifference to the rights of others. " He who steals my 
purse steals trash," but he who steals from me the purity 
of the air that God has manufactured for the sustenance 
and comfort of my being robs me of the very right to 
live in health. It would be less offensive and less un- 
gentlemanly to spit in my face, for the spittle could be 
washed away; but when the smoker puffs his foul breath 
and the choking fumes of his pipe or cigar in my face I 
am compelled to inhale them, no matter what my distress; 
while the sight of the floor of any place where the tobacco 
slaves congregate is as nauseating as the vomit of the 
drunkard. It is filthy, and it scatters its filth wherever it 
goes, regardless of its offense against others. Nothing 



Tobacco. 77 

can be more cowardly than the buffooning politeness of 
the would-be gentleman who, with the lighted weed in his 
mouth, asks you if he may be permitted to smoke. You 
answer "Yes," for you have the heroism to pay for his 
self-indulgence. Should you dare to say "No," the crin- 
ging slave would set you down as without manners because 
you refused to be polluted with his nastiness, and would 
no doubt prove the hollowness of his pretensions to 
courtesy by smoking and expectorating in opposition to 
your wishes. Trainers of youth would do well to heed 
the dictum of that prince of educators, Horace Mann: 
"The student who uses it [tobacco] should be expelled 
on the ground that the practice is unfit for a scholar and 
a gentleman." 

A preacher once sought shelter in a Southern home, but 
the good woman of the house refused him lodging. In- 
sistance proving vain, the preacher exclaimed as he moved 
away, "Well, I suppose I must go on, but I remind you 
of that Scripture that bids you ' entertain strangers, for 
thereby some have entertained angels unawares.' " " I'm 
not afraid of your being an angel," replied the woman; 
"an angel doesn't chew and spit tobacco like you do." 
By their filth shall ye know them. Imagine an angel 
squirting his foul spittle on the pavement of heaven ! If 
it is so foul as to be unimaginable in an angel, it should be 
equally so in a man. 

The use of tobacco destroys the moral sense. This is 
to be expected when a man looses his manners. While 
the use of the weed is not necessarily immoral, it never- 
theless promotes associations and tends to the formation 
of other habits that are immoral. There are few rum 
"soakers" who are not smokers. A barroom and gam- 
bling den are usually dense with smoke. The cocking 
main, the man-brute fight, and the race track are always 
clouded with the same haze. The prostitute and the 



78 The Eternal Building. 

libertine smoke from the same pipe in their swinish 
amours. All users of the weed are not bad, but nine 
tenths of the bad people — rowdies, thieves, thugs, and 
worse — use the weed. Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Cox abandoned 
tobacco after a drunken loafer, asking him for a light, 
opened his eyes to see and feel the disreputable fraternity 
existing between all users of tobacco. 

The use of tobacco destroys a man's ability to do his 
work, whether that work be manual or mental. A dis- 
eased body cannot perform the work of a sound body. A 
half-palsied hand cannot execute the work of a steady one. 
Anton declares "that a soldier who is an inveterate 
smoker is incapable to level his musket and take a steady 
aim." And another affirms: "I have known men who, 
previous to using tobacco, were the finest marksmen, 
but who, after becoming smokers and chewers, could 
hardly send a bullet into a haystack a hundred yards dis- 
tant. " As the industrial arts are constantly demanding 
more emphatically the same steadiness of hand and arm 
and precision of sight that are required of the sharpshooter, 
it will be seen how great a foe the use of tobacco is to the 
workman's keeping his job. 

A mind befogged cannot think as swiftly or coherently 
as a mind that is clear. Dr. James Copeland says, "To- 
bacco weakens the nervous powers, favors a dreamy, imag- 
inative, and imbecile state of mind, produces indolence and 
incapacity for manly or continuous exertion, and sinks its 
votary into a state of careless or maudlin inactivity and self- 
ish enjoyment of vice." Professor L. H. Gause writes: "The 
intellect becomes duller and duller, until at last it is painful 
to make any intellectual effort, and we sink into a sensuous 
or sensual animal. Anyone who would retain a clear head, 
sound lungs, undisturbed heart, or healthy stomach must 
not smoke or chew the poisonous plant." Investigations 
in a number of American and foreign colleges have proved 



Tobacco. 79 

that there is a very clearly defined line between the at- 
tainments of the smokers and the non-smokers, the latter 
always proving decidedly superior in mental vigor and 
scholarly ability. This has been so clearly demonstrated 
that the government will not allow the use of tobacco at 
West Point or at Annapolis, and the examining board at 
the naval academy reports that an appallingly large per- 
centage of the applicants for admission are rejected be- 
cause their constitutions have been irreparably injured by 
smoking. 

The use of tobacco destroys a man's body; not merely 
curses it with ill health, but absolutely and horribly de- 
stroys the body and hastens death. Tobacxo-using is 
suicide long drawn out. It breeds disease like a famine. 
Tobacco is a poison; every user of it knows this, but 
laughs away the fear of it. While he laughs the poison 
runs into his blood, travels round and round through his 
entire system, affects every organ and fiber of his being, 
and when it finds a weak spot beleaguers it with an in- 
creasing army of poisoned corpuscles and demands the 
unconditional surrender of the victim to a most loathsome 
death. Tobacco is no respecter of persons — cigars, no 
matter how extravagantly expensive, produce the same 
result as a pipe — the one whose doom it writes in daintily 
curling puffs of smoke may be the farmer unknown to 
fame of one of my earlier charges, the floor of whose mouth 
was eaten entirely through, so that as he tipped his head 
back and moved his tongue to one side I could look from 
under his chin and see the roof of his mouth ; or it may 

be United States Senator C , statesman and orator, 

dropping dead in his prime with a cigar between his teeth; 
or the idol of the nation, fighting bravely but unavailingly 
at Mount McGregor. 

Dr. Fergus Furgusson gives it as his opinion "that no 
one who smokes tobacco before the bodily powers are de- 



80 The Eternal Building. 

veloped ever makes a strong, vigorous man." Dr. H. Gib- 
bons says, " Tobacco impairs digestion, poisons the 
blood, depresses the vital powers, causes the limbs to 
tremble, and weakens and otherwise disorders the heart." 
Not to mention diseases occasionally induced by tobacco, 
consider this list of diseases and infirmities which on the 
testimony of the medical profession tobacco frequently 
causes: Cancer, especially of the tongue and lips; dimness 
of vision; deafness; loss of the sense of smell; perverted 
taste; dyspepsia; bronchitis; consumption; acne (maggot 
pimple); hemorrhoids; palpitation; spinal weakness; 
chronic tonsilitis; anorexia (loss of appetite); amaurosis 
(defective or loss of sight); caries of the teeth; coryza; 
ozaena (ulceration of the nasal cavity); epilepsy; hypo- 
chondriasis; paralysis; impotency; apoplexy; tremors; 
delirium; insanity. Truly it might be declared that if 
you do not see here the disease you would like to have, 
ask for it of the weed, and it will be forthcoming. 

Against the tobacco slave's notion that its use aids di- 
gestion is the testimony of such physicians as Drs. Rush, 
Cullen, Hassock, Hitchcock, and many others. Dr. Mc- 
Allister, of Utica, writes that the habitual smoker " weak- 
ens the organs of digestion and assimilation, and at length 
plunges into all the horrors of dyspepsia." 

Tobacco ruins the voice. The dust from snuff and the 
smoke of tobacco accumulating in filthy deposits in the 
throat and bronchial tubes accounts for much of the hoarse- 
ness, squeaking, and tremulousness noticed in the utter- 
ance of public speakers and singers; these accumulations 
often working the complete destruction of the tissues 
around them. " Preacher's sore throat " is becoming less 
prevalent now that the preachers are more and more ab- 
staining from the use of tobacco. 

Tobacco ruins the eyes. A Boston medical journal 
says: "Smokers must look to their eyes. Proofs are ac- 



Tobacco. 81 

cumulating that blindness by atrophy of the optic nerve, 
induced by smoking, is of frequent occurrence." An 
English surgeon reports that of thirty-seven patients suf- 
fering loss of sight from paralysis of the optic nerve 
twenty-three were confirmed snuffers. 

Tobacco ruins the organs of smell, taste, touch, and 
hearing just as truly as it does those of sight and speech. 
Against it medical science may well contend. 

The use of tobacco destroys man's power to propagate 
the race. This is a terrible charge, but it is terribly true. 
Loss of virility is one of the "most obvious and undeni- 
able " * facts that result from the use of this poison. Ex- 
cessive smoking leads to the destruction of the procrea- 
tive power, or if the smoker should have offspring, they 
very generally die in infancy or before reaching the period 
of puberty. Very generally, too, they are stunted in growth 
or deformed in shape, and incapable of resisting the dis- 
eases incidental to children. Dr. Cleland declares it was 
this feature of the tobacco disease that led Amrath IV to 
inflict heavy punishment upon smokers — the Sultan dread- 
ing to see the population diminished by this insidious 
process of emasculation. 

As you value the body that God has given the wisdom 
of eternity to fashion, and for which the whole world with 
its many as yet unimagined treasures is the provision, keep 
yourself from this accursed thing. Unto that God, if you 
are to be a noble man, a noble woman, with a character 
that shall be like unto the character of Christ, you must 
present your body a living sacrifice. To be acceptable to 
God you must be willing, through the aid that he will give 
you, to keep it pure, spotless, and holy by the constant re- 
fusal to pollute it with anything that is sensual and devilish. 
Sell not your birthright to a character that shall be akin 
to that of your Master's for any craving of your appetite. 

* Napley's Transmission of Life. 



82 The Eternal Building. 

Opium. 

Vice is always loathsome. A self-made slave is always 
detestable. The opium slave, whether he "hits the pipe" 
with the scum of the earth, served by a Chinaman in a sub- 
terranean abode of foul spirits, or rolls and cooks his pill 
in a fashionable uptown house, or chews herself into im- 
becility as a quiet, dissembling recluse — he or she, how- 
ever the appetite is acquired or fed, merits little pity. Can 
anything more loathsome be imagined than the sight of a 
couple of dozen men and women from the highest and 
from the lowest walks of life stretched stupefied in one 
hideous pile, huddling together in one mingled mass of 
heads, arms, and legs, regardless of sex, decency, or honor ? 
Yet this is the nightly sight in the dens where the slaves of 
the poppy gather. And the secret slave, moping listlessly 
with idiotic grin and slovenly dress about the house where 
she should reign as queen, is little better. As yet, though 
this curse is spreading, the appetite for it has not taken 
hold on the mass of our people as it has upon the Chinese; 
and the most urgent word to be spoken now is one of 
warning. Watch and test your physician, no matter how 
trusty you consider him, lest in giving you medicine to re- 
lieve some temporary ill he make use of this drug, and so 
originate within you an appetite as direful as alcohol at its 
worst. 

Intoxicants. 

Debauchery is always repulsive. Drunkenness is nau- 
seating. Intemperance has no apostles to-day, so I will 
not use space to combat a man of straw. Beware of the 
snare of moderation. Andrew Johnson considered him- 
self a moderate drinker, but he was so drunk that he could 
scarcely stand when he was inducted into the great office 
of the Vice Presidency of this nation. No wonder that 
when, only a few weeks later, at the call of Booth's 




CHARLES LAMB. 



The prince of humorists. 

He was the master of the reading world, yet the slave of 
his own appetite. 

The world has never known a wit more chaste, nor a hu- 
morist of more delicate art. 



Intoxicants. 83 

shot, he was advanced to the Chief Magistracy he proved 
the curse not only of the South, but of the entire land. 
When nearly a hundred thousand a year are marching from, 
moderation to drunkenness, and thence to hell, it is idle 
to talk of moderation. There is no safety in the cup. Of 
course some remain moderate drinkers — so some remain 
fools because their appetite for wisdom is not passionate — 
but no man who puts the cup to his lips knows that he can 
remain a moderate drinker. Every one of the one hun- 
dred thousand a year tried to remain such and failed. Not 
one of them intended to become a drunkard, but they 
fastened in their own stomachs the hook that dragged 
them to the grave. 

You want to be successful in life, to do great things, to 
maintain a good name. It is impossible to do so and 
drink intoxicants. No drunkard ever painted a Madonna 
or chiseled a great statue or mastered until his death a 
great and successful business. To do so were impossible, 
because these require clear head, sharp eye, and steady 
hand. Drunkards have in their sober moments composed 
immortal poems and delivered great orations, but they 
have sullied the names made famous by shameful lives and 
disgraceful deaths. Who had a will like Webster ? Yet 
that will could not curb appetite, and he died a drunkard. 
Stephen A. Douglas was a master of men, but a slave to 
the cup, and went early to his grave because of his drunk- 
enness. Think of Burns, of Byron, and of the terrible life 
and shameful end of our brilliant Poe! If you are think- 
ing of tippling moderately, ponder these words, wrung in 
his last days from the heart of Charles Lamb, whose wit, 
humor, and pathos won him a place in the hearts of all, 
and "caused one world to laugh in his life and two to weep 
at his death:" 

" The waters have gone over me; yet out of their depths, 
could I be heard, I would cry aloud to those who have set 



84 The Eternal Building. 

foot in the perilous flood. Could the youth to whom the 
first flavor of wine is delicious look into my degradation 
and see what a fearful thing it is to feel oneself going 
over the precipice, yet with open eyes and passive will; to 
look calmly on his own destruction, yet feel it all emanat- 
ing from himself; could he but look into my eye, feverish 
with last night's drinking and feverishly looking forward 
to to-night's repetition of that folly; could he but feel all 
godliness depart out of him, yet not forget the time when 
it was otherwise; could he but feel this body of death, out 
of which I cry hourly for deliverance, yet with feebler and 
feebler outcry — it were enough to make him dash the 
sparkling cup to earth in all the mantling pride of its 
temptation." 

"O, thou invisible spirit of wine," cried Shakespeare, 
"if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee 
' devil ! ' " And he is a fool, no matter his station, who 
takes the devil into himself even in moderate quantities. 
It was the devil in the wine that cut short the conquering 
career of Alexander the Great. It was the devil in the 
ale that again and again stretched Sheridan stupid on the 
streets after a speech that had electrified Parliament with 
its eloquence. It was the devil in the cup that fortified 
Benedict Arnold to betray his country and exchange a 
glorious name for one of unending shame. It was the 
devil in the grog that wrung from the lips of the heroic 
Lawrence, "Don't give up the ship;" had he that day 
been the sober captain of a sober crew, the Chesapeake 
would have been the victor. It is the devil in the cup that 
wrecks manhood, pollutes womanhood, curses childhood, 
fosters vice, fathers prostitution, corrupts politics, and de- 
frauds God of the just service he should receive from his 
own. Tamerlane called for one hundred and sixty thou- 
sand skulls with which to build a pyramid to his honor. 
One such ghostly pile satisfied him — not so the devil in the 



Intoxicants. 85 

cup; each year he must have his pyramid, and each year 
he piles it up. The skulls are always forthcoming; by the 
slow freight of moderation they are delivered. Shall your 
skull grin in his pile some day ? It is a hundred to one 
that it will if you board the freight at all, and this is the 
song the imps will sing of their chief as your skull is lifted 
into place: 

"Aha! champion fiend am I! I drove fifty ships on 
the rocks of Newfoundland and the Skerries and the 
Goodwins. I defeated the Northern army at Fredericks- 
burg. I have ruined more senators than will gather next 
winter in the national councils. I have ruined more lords 
than will be gathered in the House of Peers. My cup is a 
bleached human skull, and the upholstery of my palace is 
so rich a crimson because it is dyed in human gore, and 
the mosaic of my floors is made up of the bones of chil- 
dren dashed to death by drunken parents, and my favorite 
music — sweeter than Te Deum or triumphal march — my 
favorite music is the cry of daughters turned out at mid- 
night on the street because father has come home from 
carousal, and the seven-hundred-voiced shriek of the 
sinking steamer, sinking because the captain was not 
himself when he put the ship to the wrong course. 
Champion fiend am I! I have kindled more fires, I 
have wrung out more agonies, I have stretched out more 
midnight shadows, I have opened more Golgothas, I 
have rolled more Juggernauts, I have damned more 
souls, than any other emissary of diabolism. Champion 
fiend am I ! " * And all the dupes that with my wiles 
I have caught took a sip and a smile once in a 
while with a friend, and marched gayly along the 
"magnanimous" avenue of moderation until they 
stumbled at last and found it the highway to damna- 
tion. 

* Talmage on Rum. 



86 The Eternal Building. 

The Dance. 

Licentiousness is always lewd. It should open the eyes 
of all to the real trend of the dance to note that it is the 
one pleasure which demands that woman shall expose her 
person to the public gaze. We count it no honor for a 
woman to twist her lips about a pipe, cigar, or cigarette; 
we declare it a shame of shames for a woman to stagger 
drunk along the street, and we deride the poor slave of 
appetite who carries her pail of poison brazenly along the 
highway; what, then, of her who to begin the night's round 
strips her form of half its covering and goes forth to lure 
the gaze of all so much unrobed that surprise her in her 
own home with even less of her form exposed and she 
would apologize ? What of her ? Shall there be no frowns 
for her ? And what of the pleasure of the world which 
demands and fosters this cutting away of her robes ? The 
dance is the parent of the d'ecollette costume, and virtue 
dies as the dance thrives. It is not by chance that the 
dance and the brothel have become linked. They were 
born twins, and as such have thrived. The daughter of 
fashion as she goes forth to the Charity Ball, and the 
daughter of the factory as she apes her richer sister and 
dresses for the public dance, may not realize the path to 
which they commit their gliding feet, but the end thereof 
is the arms of the paramour and libertine and shame un- 
ending. This shocks you. Well it may. But the vice 
of which we must now write is more shocking still. 
Nothing but plainness of rhetoric will tell the story, no 
matter what the cost to personal feeling or delicacy. 

" There is a time to dance." Certainly. It is not a 
question of propriety, but of necessity. God is in the 
world, and where he is there is happiness, and happiness 
must oftentimes express itself in capers. Like most folks, 
I have half a dozen wires laid, which, should they flash 



The Dance. 87 

back to me the intelligence that I had won the prize for 
which they were laid in this or that business or literary 
venture, I should feel impelled to jump up in the air, 
touch my heels in glee, and perhaps dance a joy reel 
before I could work off the exuberance of my bliss. But 
thus to dance I would not feel compelled to throw my 
arms about some other man's wife or sweetheart in a way 
that would be ungentlemanly in her parlor, and hug her to 
my bosom as though she were the cause of my joy; nor 
yet would I stop to don my patent leathers and hire an 
orchestra and order the floor waxed for my dance. Not 
at all. It would be all over before I could think of such 
contemptible accessories. There is a time to dance the 
joy-dance. God help you if you have never had joy 
enough in your life to have danced it; but it needs no 
partners, and is not dependent upon white-kid slippers, 
two-button waists, swallow-tail coats, or lascivious atti- 
tudes. 

You will understand, then, that I do not combat joy. 
I have no word to write against measured steps to music 
timed. If men will hire halls and dance with men, or girls 
go wild to spend hours in the embrace of other girls, or 
husbands and wives hug and whirl each other only 
through the maze of the dizzy waltz throughout the hours 
of a night, I will hold my peace, not even chiding them 
for folly. But when I see the dance as it is, and know 
that to take sex out of it would be to rob it of its supreme 
fascination to the most casual as well as the most capti- 
vated devotee, then as a thing unholy and unclean I will 
face it and cry, "Shame, thou procuress of adultery! " 

Do you include the square dance ? Certainly. One is 
the seed, the other the crop. You cannot keep the square 
dance square; it is sure to be rounded off with a "quad- 
rille polka" or "quadrille waltz," even did we shut our 
eyes to the fact that the execution of the movements of 



88 The Eternal Building. 

the square dance calls for the same attitudes that are so 
revolting in the longer-continued round. The whole trend 
of the dancing fashion is toward the round. In the hotels 
where the self-styled fashionables congregate music is fur- 
nished only for round dances. 

The foolish prattle about the dance being an " accom- 
plishment" productive of grace and elegance of manner 
merits the sternest rebuke because of its rank impertinence. 
Have the hundred thousand ministers' wives of this coun- 
try, who almost without exception frown on the dance, no 
grace of manner? Are Lady Henry Somerset and a host of 
the noble White Ribboners whom she so grandly leads, 
and whose forms have never been clasped in this licentious 
embrace, lacking in elegance of manner? "Is it, then, 
really so that to find persons of grace and elegance of 
manners we must turn to those who have been under the 
fastidious touch of the dancing master? Is it indeed the 
dancing master himself who is to be our model — a man 
who ordinarily can get no entrance into the society for 
which he is supposed to be polishing the children and 
youth of Christian homes ? Good manners! Is this some- 
thing lodged in the mechanism of the body rather than in 
the royal chambers of the soul — a thing of airs and bows 
and affectation, and not, first of all and chiefly, a thing of 
cultured head and heart ? It is difficult to do less than 
summarily dismiss such a plea as a mere excuse for train- 
ing a child for the walks of fashion and worldliness. Dis- 
tant be the day when the manners of the dancing master 
take the place of ' the manly walk of an ingenuous youth 
of conscious rectitude,' or ' the natural grace of a pure girl 
taught by a pure mother and a native sense of delicacy ' 
how to behave. The youth of this generation, educated 
in our schools and led to the feet of Christ as the great 
teacher of manners through morals, will compare favorably 
with any that have gone before in elegant accomplishment, 




FRANCES E. WILLARD. 



America's queen. 

"A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command." 

"Hers was a warrior's soul. Her life uplifted life. She was the 
world's friend."— National Council, W. C. T. if., J 898. 



The Dance. 89 

though they have never come under a dancing master for 
a day nor taken a step in the ' merry dance.' " * 

The familiarity licensed by the dance should be enough 
to condemn it in the minds of all who think. A Phila- 
delphia army officer on first beholding a round dance ex- 
claimed, ''If I should see a man offering to dance with 
my wife in that way, I would horsewhip him!" And 
there spoke the natural instincts of a man unconvention- 
alized into countenancing the sin that fashion and lust 
term " style." Within an hour of this writing I have en- 
tered my study from a visit to one of the finest hotels in 
the Adirondacks. The music of the "german" is still in 
my ears. A wide door separates the parlor of that hotel 
from the ballroom. On the parlor side of that door, had 
I put my arms about a woman and she put hers around me 
and rested her head on my shoulder, every eye would 
have flashed fire on us, and indignant fellow-guests would 
have counted us both fit to be turned out of doors. But 
let me step through that doorway, off the carpet and on 
the wax, and lo ! all is changed. Now I can clasp and be 
clasped, join with the woman in a whirling round of inde- 
cent attitudes, and yet because we whirl thus on wax and 
do not stand still on carpet she is a lady, I am a gentle- 
man! O, fashion, thou art a fool! but thy folly is the wit 
of hell. Passing a door, lifting foot from carpet to glide 
on wax, cannot absolve from the proprieties that are bind- 
ing everywhere else. Well may every institution and 
every man that is in love with purity and righteousness 
fulminate against this unclean thing. It is just this li- 
cense by which the dance thrives that feeds impurity 
in our land. "The foundation for the vast amount of 
domestic misery and domestic crime which startles us 
often in its public outcroppings was laid when parents 
allowed the sacredness of their daughters' persons and 

* Haydn, Amusements. 



90 The Eternal Building. 

the purity of their maiden instincts to be rudely shocked 
by the waltz."* 

Where did the street walker and the woman who now 
lives in shameful vice first feel the press of a man's arm 
about her ? With eight out of ten it was when the music 
of the dance rang in their ears. Of two hundred brothel 
inmates to whom Professor Faulkner talked, and who were 
frank enough to answer his question as to the direct cause 
of their shame, seven said poverty and abuse ; ten, will- 
ful choice; twenty, drink given them by parents; one hun- 
dred and sixty-three, dancing school and the ballroom. 
This man, once a dancing master, knows of a certain 
three-months' class in dancing that has already sent eleven 
women to the brothel. A former chief of police of New 
York city declares that ''three fourths of the abandoned 
girls of this city were ruined by dancing," and a Roman 
Catholic priest clinches this with the statement that "the 
confessional revealed the fact that nineteen out of every 
twenty women who fall can trace the beginning of their 
sad state to the modern dance. " 

This is terrible evidence, but it is evidence that can- 
not be impeached. A leading Protestant minister of wide 
knowledge of the world writes: "The round dance of 
fashionable society cannot be participated in the heat and 
glare of the ballroom, with the accessories of music and 
motion, with the close physical contact and the hot breaths 
on each other's cheek, without intoxicating the brain and 
setting the passion of the participants on fire. It is phys- 
iologically impossible — deny it who will ! Any intelligent 
and honest physician will tell you so. I do not say that 
the participants know or are always conscious of the secret 
cause of their pleasurable excitement; but the fact remains 
the same." 

This you say is but the wail of a preacher; nay, it is an 

* Howard Crosby. 



The Dance. 91 

echo of the dying wail of thousands who have waltzed to 
shame and sunk unsaved into early graves. It is not by 
chance that the dance fosters vice. It does so because 
just that is its mission in society. It constantly increases 
in boldness and more daringly sneers at modesty. The 
fruit of the dance is seen in its devotees; you cannot 
gather twoscore dancers for a ball in either high or low 
life without finding the libertine and unchaste among 
them. They are always there — what must be the conse- 
quence to the pure who associate with them ? " But the 
consequences do not follow. To the pure all things are 
pure." Not so fast; the pure do not always remain pure, 
and it is the business of the dance to strike the noble blush 
of purity from the cheek. What of the dancing school — is 
it conducive to virtue ? Who is the dancing master ? 
Could he present you with such a certificate of character 
as would make you willing to intrust your wealth to his 
keeping ? Yet you hand over to him your children. 
Granted that you have found a saint to serve as hiero- 
phant at the shrine of Terpsichore, what of the initiates ? 
O, it is a select school, all are good. Select in what ? 
Merely in ability to pay the fee. Cash is not character, 
yet the cash test is the only one which those have to 
meet among whom you send the darling of your home. 
What follows ? Let us face a hideous fact — a fact which 
were it the only one, and not but a drop in the sea of 
this terrible form of sin, should blast with wrath this 
unholy thing. Here is a girl — in the case that gives me 
this illustration, the one remaining child of wealthy par- 
ents, their idol and joy. A dancing school having opened 
near their home, the daughter for "accomplishment" was 
sent to it. She came from her home modest, and her in- 
nate spirit of purity rebelled against the liberties taken 
with her person by the dancing master and the men he 
introduced to her. She became indignant at the indecent 



92 The Eternal Building. 

attitudes she was called on to assume, but noticing a score 
of young women, many of them from the best homes in 
the town, all yielding to the vulgar embrace, she cast 
aside that spirit of modesty which had been the develop- 
ment of years of home training, and setting her face 
against nature's protective warnings, gave herself as did 
the others to this prolonged hug set to music. Having 
learned to dance, its fascinations led her an enthusiastic 
captive. Modesty was crucified, decency outraged, virtue 
lost its power over her soul, and she spent her days dream- 
ing of the delights of the sensual whirl of the evening. 
Hardly conscious of the change, she had now become as 
bold as any of the women, and loved the embrace of the 
charmer. The graduation of the class was, of course, the 
occasion of a waltzing reception. To that reception she 
went attended by her father, who looked with a proud 
heart on the fulsome greeting his dear one received. 
After a little the father retired, leaving his daughter to the 
care of the many handsome gallants who danced attend- 
ance upon her. The reception did not close until the small 
hours of the morning. Each waltz became more voluptu- 
ous; intoxicated by sensuality, the dancers became more 
bold, and lust was roused in every breast. How many 
sins that reception occasioned I do not know; this at least 
is sure : that this girl who entered that dancing hall three 
months before as pure as an angel was that night in the 
ever-waiting carriage robbed of her honor, and returned 
to her home deprived forever of that most precious jewel 
of womanhood — virtue. Her first impulse the next morn- 
ing was self-destruction; then she deluded herself with 
the thought of marriage with her dancing companion, 
but he still further insulted her by declaring that he 
wanted a pure woman for his wife. What was her end ? 
The brothel. Shunned by the very society which had 
egged her on to ruin, her self-respect gone with her lost 



The Dance. 93 

purity, she went to her own, and in shame is closing her 
days. 

This is not the description of a single but of a terribly fre- 
quent sequence of the dance. And though it is a terrible 
thing to say, yet the facts warrant the utterance, that for a 
man or woman, knowing the trend of the dance, as every 
dancer who has followed the music for a year must know 
it, to continue such devotion is to advertise themselves 
to the world as candidates for immorality. And upon the 
dance we may well pass this terrible indictment: "It 
lays its lecherous hand upon the fair character of inno- 
cence, and converts it into a putrid, corrupting thing. It 
enters the domain of virtue, and with silent, steady 
blows takes the foundation from underneath the pedestal 
on which it sits enthroned. It lifts the gate and lets in a 
flood of vice and impurity that sweeps away modesty, 
chastity, and all sense of shame. It keeps company with 
the low, the degraded, and the vile. It feeds upon the 
passions it inflames, and fattens on the holiest sentiments, 
turned by its touch to filth and rottenness. It loves the 
haunts of vice and is at home in the company of harlots and 
debauchees." * 

It is because the dance is all this that the Church has 
so righteously set her face against it and pronounced upon 
it its most stinging anathemas. I would not take space 
to repeat a single word of the rebuke of religion to this 
vice were there not many in every community who lift 
their nose at the preaching heard in most Protestant 
churches. And as it is not to be denied that there are in 
every community many, mostly young women, who revile 
such preaching as too strict, and, stumbling over this 
stone, flaunt themselves off to the Protestant Episcopal 
Church under the mistaken idea that the standard of 
morality in that Church is sufficiently low to permit the 

* Lovejoy, The Mission of the Church. 



94 The Eternal Building. 

dance and the dancer to be welcomed, I shall quote 
mostly from the ringing utterances of the most respected 
leaders of that denomination. No Church in Christendom 
commends or even excuses the dance. All unite to con- 
demn it. 

The late Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont, wrote: " Danc- 
ing is chargeable with waste of time, interruption of use- 
ful study, the indulgence of personal vanity and display, 
and the premature incitement of the passions. At the 
age of maturity it adds to these no small danger to 
health by late hours, flimsy dresses, heated rooms, and 
exposed persons, while its incongruity with strict Christian 
sobriety and principle and its tendency to the love of dis- 
sipation are so manifest that no ingenuity can make it 
consistent with the covenant of baptism." Bishop Meade, 
of Virginia, declared: " Social dancing is not among the 
neutral things which, within certain limits, we may do at 
pleasure, and it is not among the things lawful but not 
expedient, but it is in itself wrong, improper, and of bad 
effect." Bishop McElvaine, of Ohio, putting the dance 
and the theater together, writes: "The only line I would 
draw in regard to these is that of entire exclusion. . . . 
The question is not what we can imagine them to be, but 
what they always have been and will be and must be in 
such a world as this to render them pleasurable to those 
who patronize them. Strip them bare till they stand in 
the simple innocence to which their defenders' arguments 
would reduce them, and the world would not have them." 
The late Bishop Coxe, of New York, who was ever with 
all his heart against vice, thus trenchantly puts himself 
and his holy office against the dance: "The enormities of 
theatrical exhibitions and the lasciviousness of dances, 
too commonly tolerated in our times, are so disgraceful 
to the age and so irreconcilable with the Gospel of Christ 
that I feel it my duty to the souls of my flock to warn 



The Dance. 95 

those who run with the world to ' the same excess of riot ' 
in these things that they presume not to come to the holy 
table. Classes preparing for confirmation are informed 
that I will not lay hands knowingly on anyone who is not 
prepared to renounce such things with other abomina- 
tions of 'the world, the flesh, and the devil.' Let all such 
choose deliberately whom they will serve, and if salvation 
be worth striving for, let them be persuaded to a sober 
life, to self-denial, and to the pure and innocent enjoy- 
ments which the Gospel not only permits, but which it only 
can create." I will add but one quotation more on this 
point, and that from the prelates of the Roman Catholic 
Church assembled in Plenary Council at Baltimore: "We 
warn our people against those amusements which may 
easily become to them an occasion to sin, and especially 
against the fashionable dances which, as at present car- 
ried on, are revolting to every feeling of delicacy and pro- 
priety, and are fraught with the greatest danger to 
morals." 

Thus far the keen-witted reader must have noticed that 
our thought seemed to be, Down with the dance to save 
the girls. Such would be a most laudable object, but it is 
equally true that we must down with the dance to save 
the men. The dance is the generator of destroying lust. 
Very few men follow the dance for its own sake; charity 
kindly grants to the woman the opinion that she does, 
though charity has very often sad cause to change its 
opinion. Most men follow the dance because of its sensual 
enjoyment, and having kindled all the fires of their passions 
by the long hours of amorous contact with waltzing women, 
they go from the ballroom to sin. The dance drives men 
to the brothel and secret vice. Its effect on men is but 
little less debasing than on women. The half-clad forms 
which present themselves to their arms are to the passions 
of men what the bottle is at the lips of appetite's slave. 



96 The Eternal Building. 

The woman who thus exposes her person but ensnares a 
dupe for her sisters in the resort of the shameless, and, re- 
sorting thither, driven by the flames kindled by the dance, 
the man is inoculated for life with the deadly virus of 
sexual disease, and goes forth with the poison in his blood 
that shall rot and consume him. Lest any words of mine 
should seem too strong, let me use here the words it was 
my privilege to hear from the lips of my friend, that peer 
of America's orators, that foremost American champion 
of social purity — the Canadian Douglass — as he faced the 
host of young Christians gathered in the Endeavor Con- 
vention at Montreal : 

" Nemesis of vengeance! I turn to the consequences 
of associate vice. In early life it was my lot to matricu- 
late in medical science. From the halls of the post-mortem 
anatomic analysis I have gone to the clinic wards of our 
hospitals. I have seen the West India fevers in their de- 
lirium; I have seen the famine plague, when over almost 
every couch in every ward there fluttered the white-winged 
angel of death until some ten thousand entered the temple 
of silence from whence there is no return. As a pastor 
I have gone through three visitations of cholera, have 
stood by one at the midnight hour in the article of death 
who heard the voice of the pulpit in the morning, and I 
have witnessed a home made desolate by a winding sheet 
that enfolded the entire household in the grave; but I 
stand here and solemnly declare that I never knew fear 
until I witnessed the terrible consequences that follow the 
violation of God's own law of purity. I have seen a young 
man who, listening to the voice of the siren once, and only 
once, passed the boundary of eternal right. I have seen 
him struck with fangs more terrible than those of the 
cobra de capello; I saw him when every bone was necro- 
sised and the cranial covering destroyed; I saw him 
mourning at last, when his flesh and his body were con- 



The Dance. 97 

sumed, exclaiming, ' How have I hated instruction, and 
my heart despised reproof.'"* And just this is the pen- 
alty that men must pay for the pleasures of the dance. 
O, young men, heed the words of St. Paul to the young 
man whom he loved as a father loves his boy, "Keep thy- 
self pure." To do so tread not the floor of the dance-hall, 
enter not into the company of women who expose their per- 
sons without blushing, yield not to the snare of the fashion 
that bids thee take her in thy arms; " her feet go down to 
death, her steps take hold on hell." 

Professor W. C. Wilkinson, when the " woe is me if I 
utter not this truth! " was upon him, as it has been upon 
me while writing these pages, so well expressed the bur- 
den of my thought that I can do no better than to make 
his words my own in bringing to a close this exposure of 
sin: "If our readers have winced at the exceptional 
plainness of speech which we have used, we beg them to 
believe that it has cost us sincere pangs of resolution to 
use it. But we have written under duress of conscience 
that did not suffer us to shrink. The engineering skill of 
the devil has defended the dance with a masterly dilemma 
that leaves open barely two alternatives of attack, about 
equally ineligible — you may either exhaust your strength 
in demonstrating the minor incidentals of the usage, in 
which case you can win an easy but also a barren victory ; 
or you must freely encounter the peril of damaging your 
own fair fame for purity and deliver your blow full at its 
inherent and essential immorality. We have deliberately 
chosen the latter alternative. We can trust the honest 
heat of indignation that has warmed our words to take 
away the offense of their extreme fidelity. As for the risk 
of being charged with bringing the impurity we find, we 
contentedly accept it. It is a charge which two classes 
of persons certainly will not prefer. These two classes 

* Douglass, Report of Montreal Christian Endeavor Convention. 



98 The Eternal Building. 

are, first, those who know us; secondly, those who know 
themselves." * 

Do not let out of mind the cause for our study of these 
corrupting things. We ought to know how to build and 
keep a sound body. These things are sure destroyers, 
and so we are compelled to consider them. There is no 
greater folly than that which cries: " Let him alone; he'll 
be all right by and by. Everyone must sow a few wild 
oats." It is a lie from beginning to end. No one need 
sow wild oats; it is never right to sow them, and the crop 
from sowing wild oats must ever be a shameful crop. If 
you sow wild, you must reap wild, and the woman who is 
sowing the ballroom has no stones to throw at the man 
who is sowing the saloon or supporting the brothel. The 
seeds of each are alike from hell and must produce a like 
infernal crop. There is no chemistry that can change the 
harvest from bad to good. You may repent of your sins, 
obtain the forgiveness of God, enjoy the blessing of self- 
witnessing salvation; but grace cannot eradicate the 
diseases of the flesh that your wild-oat sowing has en- 
gendered. Men and women reclaimed by the wondrous 
grace of God have yet died from the physical conse- 
quences of their transgression, though the newly learned 
songs of the saints were on their lips. And they have 
died, too, when life was just opening in usefulness before 
them, because the flesh reaps just what and all it sows. 

Take, then, your physical body, for which God made such 
infinite provision, and make of it all that is possible in phys- 
ical strength and beauty, knowing that only thus can you 
securely lay the foundation for an eternal character that 
shall match in anywise the character of Him who knew 
no sin. 

* The Dance of Modern Society. 



THE SOCIAL PROVISION FOR 
A GREAT LIFE. 



It aids correct thinking to compare some existing state of savage life with 
present advanced civilization, and to reflect that the past history of humanity 
on earth is chiefly a narrative of trains of events springing from the stimulus 
of man's prime wants and the law of his progressive nature. Now no state of 
savage life on record is more brutish than that at present existing among the 
inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, at the southern extremity of South America. 
Yet the children even of such savages, if taken very young and trained among 
civilized people, manifest natural capacity or aptitude for cultivation little in- 
ferior to their new companions. And, on the other hand, the children of 
civilized parents, if thrown by disaster among savages, have been found to 
acquire completely the characteristics of the savage. Such facts lead to the 
conclusion that the differences between savages and civilized men depend 
mainly on the differences of their educational training. — Neil Arnott, M.D. y 
A Survey of Human Progress. 

God gives the earth to this creature of his, because in every condition, no 
matter how low fallen, how lost and degraded, there is that in him which 
broadly marks him from every other creature on the earth — he is capable of 
mastering it. He has the seal of a Maker upon him, in his meanest estate. 
He is in a peculiar sense the son of the Maker, and in the image of the Maker. 
He is on his Father's ground to obey, to command, to endure ; for he has a 
will. His business is to break the earth into obedience ; to clean the foul things 
out and prosper the pure ; to restrain the lawless — and Ms judgment shall de- 
cide what is lawless, with no appeal ; to destroy the savage, to drive out the 
evil. It is his to say whether a mountain shall stand, or be cast into the sea ; 
whether a river shall flow at its own will, or be diked in and driven to the 
sea as he wills ; whether a forest shall remain, or a cornfield stand in its place ; 
whether the sands of Suez shall drift at the wind's will, or a river for his 
ships shall flow at human will ; whether the Atlantic and the Pacific shall be 
walled apart as he finds them, or he shall burst the dividing mountain barriers 
and make them for his uses one. — Bishop Hugh M. Thompson, The World 
and the Kingdom. 



CHAPTER III. 
THE SOCIAL PROVISION FOR A GREAT LIFE. 

Companionship. 

ON December 5, 1896, there was cast up on the beach 
twelve miles south of St. Augustine, Fla., " The 
Florida Monster" — a huge body of flesh twenty-one feet 
long, seven feet broad, four and a half feet high, weighing 
seven tons. The toughness of this mass of flesh was evi- 
denced by the fact that "all the pulling and hauling and 
turning of it partly over by the aid of six horses and strong 
tackle did not change its shape materially, or, rather, its 
elasticity served to restore it to its former shape. Its 
toughness and elasticity reminded one of the properties of 
thick vulcanized rubber.* At first it was thought to be 
the remains of a gigantic octopus, but expert examination 
proved this an error. The most satisfactory conclusion 
reached was that it was the abnormally enlarged nose part 
of the head of a sperm whale that had become detached 
from the skull and jaw. It was a huge mass of well- 
developed flesh — a strong man from the sea; hardened yet 
elastic muscles and fibers of whipcord strength. Here is 
flesh and the end of it. 

A well-developed and well-preserved mass of flesh and 
blood and bones is not a man, they are but the beginnings 
of a man. Their importance may not be underestimated, 
but they are only the steel-ribbed skeleton about which the 
structure which is to be manhood's pride is to be reared. 
Every ounce of that flesh is to be charged with sociability. 
Every drop of that blood is to be alive with the spirit of 

*Verrill, American Naturalist \ April, 1897. 
101 



102 The Eternal Building. 

sacrifice. Every manifestation of that strength is to be 
gloved with helpfulness. The animal is to cease to be 
animal and take the first step toward Godlikeness. 

Have you ever given attention to the unfolding of the 
life of children, and noticed how early they give expression 
to their desire for and love of companionship ? Let two 
mothers and their babies meet, and the babies will coo and 
crow at each other and exult in each other's companion- 
ship until you wonder if it is not true that babies have a 
language of their own. When six months more have 
passed and the babies have become toddlers they will hug 
each other and play together with the utmost delight and 
sturdily resist attempts at separation. The sight of a babe 
toddling across the floor to get within kissing distance of 
another babe is a sight of the race in quest of companion- 
ship the world over. Men love association with men. A 
hermit is as abnormal as a three- fingered or one-eyed man. 
He lacks as they lack. Note the same children after an- 
other year has passed, and you will find them picking out 
playmates and demanding to be allowed each other's com- 
pany, and they begin to " go a-visiting" — as momentous a 
thing to a three-year-old as a trip to Europe for a man of 
thirty. This companion-choosing and sociability-hunting 
of the children continues with increasing acquaintances 
and greater desire to spend time in the company of this 
one and that one all through the years that pass until the 
period of long dresses and sprouting mustaches arrives 
and forces them to the battle with customs not worthy 
of overmuch praise, through which they must pass to the 
choice of a mate for life. But not all the companionships 
end in marriage. Men companion men and women women, 
and not a few noble instances the past has given of holy 
companionships of men with women. 

This love of companionship is present in all the higher 
forms of animal life. Men must associate before they can 



Companionship. 103 

charm themselves and others with the rendering of the 
masterpieces of Beethoven and Mozart; cats must associ- 
ate before they can render for their delectation and our 
exasperation their projectile-evoking nocturnal concerts — 
essays in music as marvelous in their way as any artistic 
performance of the Germans, and fully the peer of much 
that passes for music in the joss houses of the Chinese. 
The love of the dog for companionship is evidenced not 
only in his frisky play with other dogs and his known 
fondness for children, making even the fiercest brute the 
docile slave of the child it loves, but also in that strange 
liking for a not too affectionate human master that has 
earned for Tray the title of man's truest friend. The 
hog and the cow, as well as the elephant and many of the 
wilder animals, evidence this love for companionship as 
thoroughly as the horse, whose neighing calls to others of 
his kind are so familiar to all. Many of the commonest 
horses on the farm are ready to leap high fences for no 
other reason than to rub their noses together and run side 
by side. 

If you will consider these facts, you will not be so much 
shocked when I declare that brains are not essential to so- 
ciability. The brain has its social uses in the cultivation 
and adaptation of sociability, but the animal nature of man 
will seek and find, as well as extend, social intercourse re- 
gardless of intellectual equipment. The animal in man 
will go out in longing for companionship with the animal in 
other men, so that the basis of man's social nature is 
found in the animal desires. Man does not have to pos- 
sess much brains in order to enjoy himself. Indeed, the 
more brains he has the more difficult and perplexing be- 
comes the task of supplying him with social joys. The same 
games of ball, cricket, la crosse, and football that set the 
brainless boy's feet dancing with delight continue their 
mastery over him when he has stored his brain cells with 



104 The Eternal Building. 

the gleanings of half a century. Golf is only " shinny" 
stretched out to genteel proportions. Fools enjoy them- 
selves. Congregation, not segregation, is the scientific 
method for the treatment of the amiable insane. That it 
does not take brains to make men socially happy is also 
evidenced in the indoor games of childhood and youth. 
"Drop the pillow," "Copenhagen," " Ring around a-rosy," 
"Post office," and kindred frivolities make no demand 
upon the intellect, yet many who are even past their teens 
find them enjoyable. 

Much of man's most satisfying sociality is linked with 
feasting. Fun is poked at the cake-eating church social, 
but it is to be noticed that the fun-pokers cannot meet at 
a directors' meeting, or lodge anniversary, or college com- 
mencement, or an alumni gathering, or a regimental 
reunion, or a scientific conclave, or a missionary confer- 
ence, or a canal prospecting, or anything else that brings 
a dozen or more mortals together, without having a "ban- 
quet." The festal board is a well-known developer of 
good feeling. But it doesn't take brains to sup soup, or 
eat turkey, or make ice cream disappear! Brains will 
always add their cheer if they are present, but there can 
be a good time without intellectual equipment. You will 
understand, then, that as we now consider the ways and 
means for the development of man's social nature we are 
doing so with the fact before us that at this stage brains 
are not essential, though they are useful. You can be 
good-natured long before you can be well cultured. You 
can be mannerly long before you are big enough for a 
piccadilly collar or a front-buttoned waist. The price the 
child must pay to win and retain companions and be es- 
teemed by its playmates is just the price the grown man 
must pay to be esteemed and counted in the best sense 
"a jolly good fellow " by the men about him. Unselfish- 
ness, good manners, politeness, cheerfulness, helpfulness, 



Companionship. 105 

and kindred graces make the boy or girl welcome to all 
their comrades, and it takes the same expressions of the 
best side of himself to enable the man to win his way to 
companions and through companions to place and favor. 
He who would have friends must show himself friendly. 
He must turn himself best side out, and so better the world 
while bettering himself. 

No man is built for himself alone. He cannot come to 
perfection alone with himself. Without his man Friday 
Crusoe would have become a savage. It takes the rub of 
contact with other men to make one a man, and the find- 
ing and using of all that exhaustless provision for his 
physical nature which we have already noticed bring man 
to the discovery of the use and power and joy of this social 
side of himself. It is here that man begins to show the 
difference between himself and other animals; here that 
he begins to reap the advantages of his wonderfully fash- 
ioned body, steady hand, and clear head. His stomach 
cries for food, and he starts out to find it, and soon rubs 
against another man pursuing a like quest. Perhaps they 
fight for the possession of the bone, but even that were 
gain, for the survivor must needs develop his muscles and 
improve his methods of approach before meeting another 
man. He can never go back to life as it was before he 
found out that there were others in the world. It may be 
that the next time he meets a man the meat is sufficient 
for both of them, and as they eat it raw they awake to the 
pleasure of companionship and agree to hunt together. 
It is the beginning of better things for both of them and 
for all related to them. The difference between the man 
brought up in some lonely corner out of all relation to 
other men and the one brought up in daily contact with the 
many who by association have been civilized is the differ- 
ence between the Patagonian or the Andamonian and the 
citizen of any of the great cultured nations of the world. 



106 The Eternal Building. 

A man is not truly a man until these companionable 
faculties of his nature are developed. If he were com- 
pelled to come to maturity and spend his years out of 
relation to his fellow-men, he would rank lower than the 
beasts. Growing up with only the association of the birds 
and less ferocious animals, he would be more poorly 
equipped than they for the duties of existence. These 
lower forms of life gain all they ever gain at birth. Com- 
panionship, though they covet it, confers no new power 
upon them. They will be just as perfect lions, rats, buffa- 
loes, or rabbits whether they pass their days alone or run 
in herds. "A thousand blackbirds living together in 
relation are not different from a thousand blackbirds living 
apart and out of relation. A squirrel gains no elements 
of squirrelhood by companionship, and loses nd element 
of it by isolation. He may be taken from his nest as soon 
as he is born and never be permitted to see another squir- 
rel, but he will be just as much of a squirrel and know 
as well how to get the meat out of a nut as if free in the 
forests with others of his kind. A mocking bird comes 
to the power of song as well in a cage, separated from 
other birds, as when fed and trained in the orchard by 
the mother bird. The chords in his throat were set to 
music, and, without teacher or praise, at a certain period 
of his growth his song will ring through the house."* 

But it is not so with man. His birthright is far inferior 
to that of every other animal. For all other animals the 
world is ready just as they find it. They eat their food 
raw, and it is enough. But man is not content thus to 
eat. Even the savage demands a fire. Nature has made 
immense provision for man's physical wants, but it is for 
man as man, not as animal, and through conquest of 
nature and it may be of some men, but always easiest and 
most completely by the companionship that unites many 

* Lee, The Making of a Man. 



The Contest Begins. 107 

men for the attainment of like ends, man must win his 
way to the provision and master the secrets of its use. 
The horse or the cow thrusts its nose in the grass a few 
moments after it is born, and just so, nose in the grass, it 
is content to die, and from birth to death it asks no 
more. So it is with all the animal world save man. " Of 
all animals upon earth the human animal alone is hungry. 
The others find all things ready to their needs. He alone 
finds no provision. The resources are all in nature, it 
is true, but he must master and utilize the resources. He 
must house, clothe, feed himself by outrages upon nature. 
He finds no table spread for him in the wilderness. The 
lowest creeping thing upon the sands, the most ephemeral 
insect humming in the sunshine, is more favored far than 
he. He alone must make his bread out of the stones." * 
At birth man is the least prepared of all the animals for 
this quest for food. He is the weakest and tenderest of 
the whole animal world. He has neither teeth nor claws 
to fight his way, nor fur nor feather to cover his flesh. He 
has no strength to run, and no wit to bid him hide. 
Neither the water nor the air will support him, and when 
the sun does not burn him the cold is ready to freeze him. 
Yet he accepts the situation, demands his dinner and 
gets it. 

The Contest Begins. 

Having found a companion, man learns that their wants 
are largely identical. Each needs food for his belly, 
clothes for his back, and a shelter for his body. To gain 
these they pool their powers, and the first " trust" is born. 
These two soon find others, and they learn that the others 
have something that they want, and that they have things 
which the others desire. Barter is the result. Barter is 
the father of commerce, and commerce, continuing the 
work of its father, in exchanging the oversupply of each 

* Thompson, The World and the Kingdom. 



108 The Eternal Building. 

group to supply the lack of each, works more important 
results than the mere production and distribution of the 
temporal necessities of life. Commerce is the weaver of 
humanity. It brings men together, as the separate threads 
are brought together in a loom, and binds them in close 
relations, making the good or ill of one fraught with mo- 
mentous results to all; and teaching all those mutual obli- 
gations now resting upon them, it, through insistance upon 
obedience to these obligations, presents to the race that 
marvelous mechanism known as society. Henceforth 
man cannot live for himself alone. The individual must 
give himself to this greater expression of human life, yet 
only to find that in the giving he receives more than he 
gives. 

First, he finds that there is more to him than his appe- 
tites. His god is no longer his belly; the spirit in him re- 
sponds to the spirit in other men, and there is exhilaration 
in the response. It is told of Madame de Maintenon that 
one day when a number of savants were at her table the 
servant slipped to her side and whispered, "Please, 
madame, tell one more anecdote; there is no roast to-day/' 
The story was told, and it was better than a roast. So man 
finds through companionship a subtle yet ennobling source 
of delight and betterment. More, it is only by the use he 
makes of this new-found good that man lays hold of the 
full power of the marvelous provision which has been 
made for him in the world. The individual man can 
never raise much of a palace; its stones are too heavy for 
him to lift alone. His largest boat will always be tiny, 
for he has not sufficient strength to manage a great sail 
nor arms to use more than a single pair of oars. His best 
method of cloth manufacture must continue to be the 
hand weaving of flags or the slow and tedious use of the 
spinning wheel and footloom. But when he joins himself 
to other men who alone are as powerless as himself there 



The Contest Begins. 109 

seems to be no end to his mastery. The winds are com- 
pelled to drive him where he will; the force locked up in 
the mountains he unlocks, and it pulls or drives him as his 
fancy orders; the lightning now is harnessed, and he can 
build his palaces and make his clothes with greatest ease. 
With these forces at his command why should he forever 
look on the same plot of ground or eat only the food of 
his own few acres or know only those who live on the 
other side of his own rail fence ? These forces will bear 
him around the world, and around the world he goes. As 
an individual his kingdom was only worth a horse, for it 
was well-nigh as circumscribed as that animal's kingdom; 
but now the world is his kingdom, and his citizenship 
therein he sets out to attest. The whole range of his 
vision, social and physical, is enlarged, and the man in 
him is really aroused. 

"On the individual side of himself man would take up 
with the present, the immediate, with that which allures 
the sense and with holy incense regales the imagination. 
On the social side of himself he would despise the imme- 
diate and give the casting vote in favor of the unbiased, 
immeasurable good. In such a being as man conflict were 
inevitable. With a horizon measured by the edge of the 
plain where he stands on the one side, and a horizon melt- 
ing into the infinite star depths on the other, it were but 
to be expected that a contest would arise between the 
larger and the lesser outlook. On the one side he would 
possess the field, concentrate his attention upon its grasses 
and its fruits, and lose himself in its products. On the 
other he would go forth to see where the stars are, to 
travel the sources of their light, and to travel with them 
along their silent paths. W T ith a view measured by the 
hour that shuts him round on the one side, and with a 
view ' measured by the organic pulsations of the world on 
the other,' the question would be whether to give himself 



110 The Eternal Building. 

to the immediate pleasures of the hour or ' to elongate the 
pendulum of his timepiece till it should embrace the ages 
and regulate his life by an eternal measure. ' With appe- 
tites on one side, clamoring for the things in sight, and 
with conscience on the other, calling for harmony with 
things high and remote, the question would be whether to 
give the consent of the will to the demands of the appe- 
tites or to the appeal of the conscience." * 

Thus at the very beginning of his existence as a social 
being man must fight a battle within himself. Shall the 
merely animal or the social part of himself rule ? Will he 
eat, drink, and be merry, getting all and giving naught, a 
beast still, though better fed ? or will he curb his appetites 
and give the full measure of his strength and talent for 
the good of others ? In other words, he is face to face 
with the question, will you live for self or for others ? 
Mark, it need not yet be the question, will you serve God 
or not ? but, will you serve yourself or your fellows ? And 
it is just here that he must decide the question, and as it 
is decided his character will be reared a palace or a hovel; 
a glorious temple of good cheer or the den of a miser. 
The quotation we have just made also hints at one side of 
another great and allied truth. To make the most of 
himself a man must be on good terms with himself. He 
must be able to look his own spirit in the eye and not 
flinch at what he sees there. He must not think himself 
a man if his conscience constantly brands him as 
animal. Of this we shall have occasion to write in a 
later chapter. It is equally true that to make the most 
of himself a man must be on good terms with others, for 
it is only through his relations with others that such a 
thing as success is possible. There are some successful 
animal tamers in the world, but man is not to be only an 
animal tamer. No success in his relations with animals 

* Lee, The Making of a Man. 



The Contest Begins. Ill 

will be counted the success for which the majority of men 
rightfully seek. All success is a thing of conquering. 
You conquer difficulties, thoughts, secrets, sciences, arts, 
armies, navies, politics, or something or other, and men 
hail you as the conqueror, and you have success. It may 
be a thing of the nation or the world, or it may be a thing 
of the family or the community, or something known only 
to yourself and God. Though a hundred lions go down 
on their knees before you, you would not be satisfied or 
successful if the work you had set yourself was the state- 
ment of a truth that would make a hundred thinking men 
get down on their knees before your God. If when 
Beecher went to Britain in 1863 to rebuke the ruling 
classes for their sympathy for the South he had looked 
into the eyes of ten thousand rattlesnakes and every one 
of them had hushed its hideous noise and buried its fangs 
in the sand, it would have been a wonder, to be sure, but 
not the success he sought; that only came when, after 
patiently standing hour after hour to be hissed at, he 
finally worked in the words of his message and roused those 
full-lunged Britons to denounce what they had hitherto 
commended. That is success. Commanding, by your 
work, words, life, character, the tribute of other men, you, 
of course, being called on to make a like tribute in order 
that other men may have success. The successful mer- 
chant is the man who forms relations with the largest 
number of profitable purchasers. The successful politi- 
cian is the man who gets himself in vote-winning relations 
with the majority of the citizens. The successful general 
is the man whose orders are executed with the least 
question and the most fidelity by other men. You 
are to succeed through men. Hence, if success is to be 
yours, you must get and keep yourself in such rela- 
tions with other men that they will be willing .to lend 

you their aid — that is, be conquered by your good will 
8 



112 The Eternal Building. 

good plan, wise leadership, or whatever may be the note 
of your conquering. 

The Science of Success. 

Before considering some of the methods by which you 
may win and maintain these right relations with other 
men, let us seek from science a most thrilling and beauti- 
ful illustration of the power and value of such relationship 
and interaction. Sound, electricity, heat, and light are 
all forms of force which owe their existence to the action, 
relation, and interaction of material particles. The world- 
enswathing blue that science has denominated " ether " is 
a surging mass of infinitesimal particles, and sound, elec- 
tricity, heat, and light are but the product of different 
rates of vibrations among them. As a result of certain 
slow and stately intercourse among these molecules there 
is sound, and this sound becomes melodious as it is scien- 
tifically made use of through the production of certain 
numbers of vibrations. When you strike middle C of 
your piano you produce two hundred and sixty-one vibra- 
tions in a second; the heaviest string of a modern grand 
gives twenty-seven and one half to a second, while its 
shortest string produces forty-two hundred waves a second. 
Between these two extremes are included all the sublimi- 
ties of organ, choral, and orchestral music. The fame of 
Beethoven and Bach, Mozart and Mendelssohn, Haydn and 
Handel, and every other master of music was made by 
their ability to play symphonies on these molecules by 
forcing them into such relations that their rush and move- 
ment brought enrapturing melodies to our ears. 

When the rapidity of the movement of these particles is 
increased and they are mingled by waves that move with 
the speed of a hundred million vibrations a second we 
have electricity ; and Morse and Edison, Gray and Tesla, 
Thomson and Bell, emblazoned their names on the roll of 



The Science of Success. 113 

the world's benefactors by their ability to utilize these swift- 
swinging particles, and harnessing their product, belted it 
to our machinery, strung it on our trolleys, set it aglow in 
our arcs and incandescents, and with its swift wings and 
fins rushed messages over mountains and under seas. 

With a slight change in the method of intermingling 
these molecules and another increase in the velocity of 
their movement heat is the result. Watt and Stephenson 
and Corliss fathomed the mysteries of its power, aroused 
with the touch of live coals the necessary vibrations, and 
then with the force produced brought the ends of the earth 
together, and made every nook and cranny of the world 
minister to the need of every other as the iron horse raced 
over the continents and the iron-hearted leviathan rode 
the storms of every sea. 

When with a rush and a swing and a swirl these mole- 
cules spin and race and waltz in and out, hither and yon, 
up and down, right and left, at a rate somewhere between 
one hundred and five hundred trillion vibrations a second — 
a speed you get a little glimpse of in the swiftness of the 
lightning's flash and its far-reaching illumination — then 
you have light. Light that travels the celestial railway 
from sun to earth, ninety-two million miles in eight min- 
utes! And it is this swift-darting thing that Daguerre and 
his successors dared to grapple with, and which they have 
made paint their pictures for them, and paint them, too, 
with marvelous swiftness, as the kinetoscope is now our 
daily witness. 

Men are the molecules that you are to set in vibration 
if you would win success. You may play on them as Mo- 
zart did on the sound waves. You must make yourself 
known through them as Edison is known through the 
obedience he commands from electricity. They must 
lend you their force as heat lent itself to Watt; and if it is 
place you seek, you must have their votes ; if it is wealth, 



114 The Eternal Building. 

you must have their dollars ; if it is fame, you must have 
their praise. They must paint your picture everywhere 
as the sun does the photographer's. The greater your 
relations with men and the more ably you use those rela- 
tions the greater is your success and the greater your con- 
tribution to the general good. Napoleon illustrates again. 
Europe had cast him out. His kingdom was a paltry 
isle of the sea, and his throne another had taken. The 
"Lilies" were everywhere. Suddenly the exile sets foot 
on French soil again with a bare thousand men, with which 
to reconquer France and defy all Europe. History has no 
parallel for that triumphal inaugural of the Hundred Days. 
There was no opposition and there were no recruits until 
Grenoble was reached. Near that city a detachment of 
troops barred the road under orders to fire on Napoleon 
the moment he appeared. He appeared. " There he is! 
Fire!" cried the commander. But the soldiers did not 
fire; their knees were trembling; their faces were blanched 
as they hesitated between love and duty. Napoleon ad- 
vanced within pistol shot, and they recognized the old 
uniform he had worn when leading them to victories that 
were the wonder of the world. " Soldiers of the Fifth, be- 
hold me! Kill your emperor if you wish." The next in- 
stant the royalist is forgotten, and a shout cuts the air, 
" Vive V Empereur /" rings from every throat, and, sobbing 
and cheering, the men fall on their knees to kiss his shoes 
and struggle to touch his clothes. It was the conquest by 
a man of men. The royalists fled. The "Bees " swarmed; 
from Grenoble to Paris it was one long huzza. Regiment 
after regiment that were sent to intercept him greeted him 
as the liberator of France as soon as he stood before them, 
and without firing a shot or shedding a drop of French 
blood the exile mounted the throne from which a king had 
run away to tell the story of his bloodless defeat. 

That is success. Napoleon knew how to play on human 




NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 



While he lived he was France. 

His was a will which it took all Europe to subdue. 



Good Manners. 115 

molecules. He triumphed through men. Thus must you 
succeed. Learn the give and take of life. Live so that 
men will take off their hats to you. That is success. 
Learn, too, how to use success. Let me give you a rule: 
When men stand with their hats in their hands before you 
see to it that you stand with your hat off before God. Do 
so, and your success will be eternal. 

Good Manners. 

Now let us give attention to some of the things that will 
fit you to play well on men, that will make you a master 
of their hearts, and so win for you their aid. The first of 
these are good manners. 

It is said that before Apelles painted his wonderful pic- 
ture, " The Goddess of Beauty," that won the hearts of all 
lovers of the beautiful, he traveled for years studying the 
beautiful women of Greece, that he might embody in his 
peerless Venus the loveliness of all. So the man who 
would be good mannered must give himself to the study 
of the good in all whom he meets and adopt for himself all 
that is worthy of imitation. " Birth's gude, but breedin's 
better," say the Scotch, and they have a canny way of 
getting at the truth. Many have an idea that good man- 
ners are both the peculiar characteristics and the peculiar 
property of the rich and highborn. But this is far from 
the truth. Lack of good manners is, of course, far more 
reprehensible in one well-born because of the more favor- 
able surroundings for their cultivation, but there is not the 
slightest reason why the poorest classes should not prac- 
tice these graces of good character as well as the well-to- 
do. No man is so poor as to be excused from being a 
gentleman, and no man is so poor that he should not be treated 
like a gentleman. " I know I am a tough and a drunkard, 
and just out of jail," said a half-drunken fellow in a cellar 
to a parish visitor, "and my wife is starving; but that 



116 The Eternal Building. 

don't give you a right ter come into my house without 
knocking." 

Many a man born to the purple has proved only an 
ermined boor, while the children of the hovel have cap- 
tured the world with their charms. Good manners are 
the union of courtesy, politeness, kindness, and consider- 
tion of others, and these are as possible to the poor as to 
the rich. " One may be polite and genteel with very little 
money in his purse. Politeness goes far, yet costs noth- 
ing. It is the cheapest of all commodities. It is the 
humblest of all the fine arts, yet it is so useful and so 
pleasure-giving that it might almost be ranked among the 
humanities." * The spirit of courtesy and unselfishness is 
a fortune in itself. Good manners are passports. They 
furnish the key to all the palaces in the world, and into all 
they may enter assured of cordial welcome. They are like 
the sunshine, that is welcome everywhere. They carry 
light, brightness, cheer, and warmth everywhere they go. 
Scatter this sunshine ! The world needs much of it, and it 
has great rewards for those who supply its want. 

Manners facilitate social intercourse. They are trunk 
lines through the race for the carriage of good cheer. 
They are rails on which you can ride into the Grand Cen- 
tral Station of Success. Of course you will not find the 
rails all laid for you. To put them down is your business, 
and be sure you pay full value for the right of way, for you 
are to pass that way every day; if your passing evokes a 
hiss, you have laid them wrong, and your outlook is failure; 
if it wins you a cheer, take heart — the station cannot be 
far distant. You must cultivate your manners as you would 
your muscle. You must prepare yourself to be a gentle- 
man as the athlete prepares himself for the track. A few 
gentlemen are born; far more are made. Old William of 
Wykeham, said, "Manners makyth man;" but it were 

♦Smiles, Character. 



Good Manners. 117 

nearer the truth to say man maketh his manners, and his 
manners maketh his success or account for the lack of it. 
" Oil your mind and your manners to give them the neces- 
sary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not 
do."* 

Your manners, then, must not be neglected. You want 
to sell and buy goods; you want to win your case at the 
bar, in the senate, on the rostrum, or in the pulpit; you 
want to make your way up from the errand boy to the 
inner office; from the cash boy to the firm; from the man- 
of-all-work about the factory to the employer of all the 
workmen. Good manners will do it. A blockhead with 
good manners is almost sure to win where men even of 
great ability but without manners will fail. " Manner is 
one of the principal external graces of character. It is the 
ornament of action, and often makes the commonest of- 
fices beautiful by the way in which it performs them. It 
is the happy way of doing things, adorning even the small- 
est details of life, and contributing to render it, as a whole, 
agreeable and pleasant. . . . Manner has a good deal to 
do with the estimation in which men are held in the world; 
and it has often more influence in the government of others 
than qualities of much greater depth and substance. A 
manner at once gracious and cordial is among the greatest 
aids to success, and many there are who fail for want of 
it; for a great deal depends upon first impressions, and 
these are usually favorable or otherwise according to a 
man's courtesy and civility. While rudeness and gruffness 
bar doors and shut hearts, kindness and propriety of be- 
havior, in which good manners consist, act as an ' open 
sesame ' everywhere."! " There is no policy like polite- 
ness," saysMagoon; "a good manner often succeeds where 
the best tongue has failed." The art of pleasing is the art 
of getting on in the world. Bees will not sting one whose 

♦Chesterfield. + Smiles, Character. 



118 The Eternal Building. 

flesh is smeared with honey. "I beg your pardon, my lit- 
tle man; I am sorry I ran against you," apologized a young 
lady who had unintentionally run against a ragged beggar 
boy and nearly knocked him down. The apology was the 
most unexpected to the urchin and the hardest to digest, 
but at last he grasped it, and with a low bow and smiling 
face responded, "You have the parding, miss, and wel- 
come, and the next time you run ag'in me yer can knock 
me clean down, an' I won't say a word." 

Manners come by polishing. The attrition of life must 
be allowed to wear away the rough corners, sharp angles, 
and jagged edges of our cross-grained and obstinate na- 
tures. " Stones which have not been subjected to the at- 
trition of one another or of water retain the rough surfaces 
and sharp corners and edges which they had when first 
broken from the earth's crust. But go down to the sea- 
shore or to the river bed and you will find that the contin- 
ual washing of the waves and the rolling of the stones 
together have polished their rough surfaces and worn off 
their sharp corners and jagged edges. " * So men in the 
wash and roll of life are worn smooth and fitted to pass 
through life with the least friction. And just in that you 
have a keynote to success. The man who is always suc- 
cessful in kicking up a muss will be successful in nothing 
else. Friction retards progress. "Men, like bullets," 
says Richter, "go farthest when they are smoothest." 
" There is no society where smiles, pleasant looks, animal 
spirits, are not welcomed; where they are not of more im- 
portance than sallies of wit or refinements of understand- 
ing. The little courtesies which form the small change of 
life may appear, separately, of little moment, but, like the 
spare minutes, or the penny a day, which amount to such 
enormous sums in a lifetime, they owe their importance 
to repetition and accumulation. The man who thrives in 

* Jackson, Character Building. 



Good Manners. 119 

any calling is not always the shrewdest or most laborious 
man, but he is almost invariably one who has shown a will- 
ingness to please and be pleased, who has responded to the 
advances of others, not now and then, with conscious 
effort, but heartily, through nature and habit, while his 
rival has sniffed and frowned and snubbed away every help- 
ing hand."* 

Perhaps the commonest drawback to good manners is 
shyness. Dr. Marden declares this to be a disease. Great 
folk have had it. Washington was as awkward as a 
farmer tumbled from a hay rigging into a drawing-room. 
Canning could never be a gentleman for more than three 
hours at a stretch. Elihu Burritt would hide in the cellar 
when company came. Byron would jump out of the win- 
dow to escape approaching visitors. Shakespeare was ex- 
tremely shy, and retired from London when only forty, 
and never tried to publish any of his famous dramas. 
Addison, than whom none could write a better essay, 
could not put a dozen words together gracefully in con- 
versation. Sir Isaac Newton was termed the shyest man 
of his age. Archbishop Whately never knew what to do 
with his feet ; ladies sitting next him at the table often had 
to remove his lower extremities from their laps — the good 
prelate all unconscious of the kindness performed. Haw- 
thorne was rather morosely shy; he would turn his back 
to avoid recognition, and walk the streets with his eyes on 
the ground to avoid recognizing others. He knew his 
disease was unpardonable, and wrote, "God may forgive 
sins, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or 
earth." 

Generally speaking, shyness is only morbid self-con- 
sciousness. You are so important in your own estimation 
that you think you cannot walk the street without all eyes 
being on you. You are vastly mistaken. Stand on your 

* Matthews, Getting on in the World. 



120 The Eternal Building. 

head, and the world will notice you; but keep both feet on 
the ground, behave yourself ordinarily well, and you will 
be surprised to know the number of persons who will never 
know you are out of doors or in the society room. Sydney 
Smith was afflicted with this disease; let him describe his 
cure: "I was once very shy, but it was not long before I 
made two very useful discoveries — first, that all mankind 
were not solely employed in observing me; and, next, that 
shamming was of no use ; that the world was very clear- 
sighted, and soon estimated a man at his true value. This ' 
cured me." 

If you desire to appear well in company, behave well at 
home. "Eat at your own table," wrote Confucius, "as 
you would eat at the table of the king." If parents would 
only learn to profit by the "shocks " they must receive at 
their home tables, they would less often be shocked by the 
behavior of their children when dining out. You can't 
put on your manners with your best suit. You will never 
dine decently in public until you have done so quite a num- 
ber of times in private. Manners are not a mere veneer. 
You must be a gentleman on the inside or you will never 
long continue to pass for one because of your outside be- 
havior. Gentlemanliness is the genial good will of your 
better nature expressing itself. If you are crabbed and 
sour at heart, your manners will manifest the same bad 
blood. Bad-hearted folks often have company manners; 
but we live with open windows and doors these days, and 
the world soon learns to know the sham. " Here is a man 
who is cross, crabbed, moody, sullen, silent, sulky, stingy, 
and mean with his family and servants. He refuses his 
wife a little money to buy a needed dress, and accuses 
her of extravagance that would ruin a millionaire. Sud- 
denly the bell rings. Some neighbors call; what a change! 
The bear of a moment ago is as docile as a lamb. As by 
magic he becomes talkative, polite, generous. After the 



Good Manners. 121 

callers have gone his little girl begs her father to keep on 
his ' company manners ' for a little while, but the sullen 
mood comes back, and his courtesy vanishes as quickly as 
it came. He is the same disagreeable, contemptible, 
crabbed bear as before."* Such a creature is only var- 
nished, and that but poorly. Let your manners be known 
at home. Give your best self to your own. Rob not your 
home to give light to society; if you do, your light will soon 
grow dim. If you would shine well among men, shine 
brightly in your own home. 

Good manners are a prime factor of success in public 
life, whether the calling be law, politics, or divinity. To 
plead well you must please well. Many a case is won far 
more by the personal manner than by the brain force of 
the advocate. Good manners beautify not the face, but 
the life, and thus the homely faced have a chariot in which 
to ride. France knew none homelier than Mirabeau; he 
had "the face of a tiger, pitted with smallpox;" but so 
irresistible were the charms of his exquisite manners that 
he mastered the populace — shaking "pestilence and war" 
with his thunder. Wilkes was ugly and deformed in face, 
form, and morals, yet he with good reason boasted to 
Lord Townsend, the handsomest man in England, that, 
given a half hour's start, he would win from him the affec- 
tions of any woman in the land. Fox, after gambling 
away his last dollar and becoming the most cordially 
hated public man in England, yet saved himself from being 
personally disliked by his gracious manner. Madame de 
Stael was anything but lovely of face, yet an indefinable 
witchery of manner made her the uncrowned queen of 
Paris, kept her salon thronged with the elite of all Europe, 
and aroused even Napoleon to exile her. Madame Tesse 
said of her, " If I were queen, I would command Madame 
de Stael to talk to me every day." Marlborough "wrote 

* Marden, Pushing to the Front. 



122 The Eternal Building. 

bad English and spelt it worse, " yet the grace of his man- 
ner and the wit of his tongue did more than his conquer- 
ing sword to settle the disputes of Europe and shape the 
destinies of half a dozen nations. Chesterfield, that prince 
of gentlemen, won many a victory for his party in the 
British Lords not, as he confessed, because he knew what 
he was talking about, but because of his choice of words, 
roundness of periods, and care in elocution and manner. 
"This succeeded, and ever will succeed; they thought I 
informed them because I pleased them; and many of them 
said that I had made the whole very clear to them, when, 
God knows, I had not even attempted it." "I call him a 
very lucky lawyer, for there was not one of those five 
cases that came before us where he wasn't on the right 
side." Thus spoke a juryman from whom the witchery of 
Choate's manner had won five successive favorable ver- 
dicts. Few compliments expressed more clearly the in- 
nate gentlemanliness of our great President than the words 
of Frederick Douglass: "Lincoln was the first great man 
I talked with freely who in no single instance reminded 
me of the difference between himself and me — the differ- 
ence in color." "Bishop F6nelon is a delicious man," 
said Lord Peterborough; "I had to run away from him to 
prevent his making me a Christian." It was just such 
grace of manner that made Philip of Macedon exclaim on 
hearing a report of the Philippics of Demosthenes, " Had 
I been there, he would have persuaded me to take up arms 
against myself ! " 

It is all in the way you say a thing. An old Quaker 
and a young advocate traveled together in the old aboli- 
tion days. When the Quaker lectured things ran smooth, 
and his audience was carried by storm; but when the 
young man declared himself eggs flew, stones rattled, 
and there would be a general row. When this had con- 
tinued some time the young man sought an explanation, 



Good Manners. 123 

for both declared the same gospel. "Why is it you are 
cheered and I am abused ? " "I will tell thee," replied 
the Quaker. "Thee says, 'If you do so and so, thou 
shalt be damned.' I say, 'Friends, if thou wilt not do 
so and so, thou shalt not be damned.' " 

Good manners will more than double your working capital 
if you expect to start in business. Indeed, good manners 
are so large a factor in commercial success that you can 
afford to start with a very small cash capital if you have a 
large fund of courtesy. "Thank you, my dear; please 
call again," said to a beggar girl who had purchased a 
cent's worth of snuff, made Lundy Foote a millionaire. 
Butler, of Providence, R. I., once reopened his store after 
closing it for the night and starting for home to get a 
spool of thread for a child. All Providence soon heard 
of it and came to buy. The profit on that spool of thread 
was a million and more. A London dry-goods salesman 
won the reputation of perfection in courtesy and patience. 
A titled woman of wealth determined to test him, and put 
him through the whole list of woes that experienced shop 
fiends have devised for making themselves odious and 
salesmen miserable. Mr. Perfection stood the ordeal, 
and the woman set him up in business for himself, and, 
of course, the courtesy that won him his start won him 
eminence and wealth. Ingram, the publisher of the 
London Illustrated News, who lost his life when the Lady 
Elgin was destroyed on Lake Michigan, earned his start 
in life by his considerateness of others. One of his cus- 
tomers wanted his paper early, and rather than disappoint 
him Ingram one morning walked ten miles to deliver a 
single paper. Another time he rose at two o'clock and 
tramped to London and back, that the failure of the post 
might not deprive his patrons of their journal. Such a 
man was bound to succeed. Jack Elwes must have been 
the champion miser of his generation, for in order to save 



124 The Eternal Building. 

butcher's bills he ate his mutton through from head to 
tail, no matter how well the last bits could walk around 
the platter; yet this sordid creature gave hundreds of 
pounds to advance the interests of an officer whose man- 
ner had pleased him. A penniless English curate noticed 
a gang of hoodlums jeering and jibing two old maids who 
desired yet were afraid to enter the church. Pushing his 
way through the crowd, the curate gave an arm to each of 
the women, escorted them through the crowd, and con- 
ducted them to choice seats in the church, even though 
the brainless were tittering. Some years later the curate 
was surprised to learn that the old maids were dead and 
had left him a good-sized fortune. Courtesy pays. 

Ross Winans made his fortune by his courtesy to stran- 
gers. Two Russians were inspecting our locomotive fac- 
tories. The big shops at Philadelphia paid little attention 
to them. Mr. Winans had only a fourth-rate shop, but he 
had first-rate manners, and when the Russians came to 
him he took pains to acquaint them thoroughly with the 
details of his work, and quite charmed his guests. Within 
a year the czar invited him to transfer his labors to Russia 
and superintend great shops there. He did so and became 
rich, his income soon rising to $100,000 a year — a pretty 
good return for keeping a smile on your face and a civil 
tongue in your mouth. The Bon Marche of Paris, the 
greatest store in the world, with an army of clerks one 
third as large as our standing army before the Spanish 
war, is a monument to good manners. The two rules that 
have made this vast establishment what it is are one low 
price to all and courtesy unlimited. Politeness here is not 
sufficient. The clerks must so interest the visitors in the 
store that they will feel at home and count the Bon Marche 
an earthly paradise. This is their one great advertisement. 
On this plan A. T. Stewart and, later, John Wanamaker 
and Marshall Field have built up their great business. 



Good Manners. 125 

Courtesy is the best paymaster on earth, and, as evi- 
denced in the case of the young curate especially, it takes 
courage to be courteous. It is not a namby-pamby thing 
without backbone. The bravest men on earth are the 
kindest. You haven't got to be a " sissy " to be a saint, 
nor a clown to be cheerful. Be a man, with good, healthy 
blood in your heart; then let that blood speak, and you 
will be kind-hearted and noble, and that is courtesy — 
good manners. Courtsey is but the Golden Rule expressed 
in life; or, as Dr. With erspoon defined it, "real kindness, 
kindly expressed." This you will find the oiled key that 
will turn the bolts in every lock. 

An old legend tells us that when the monk Basle died, 
while under the ban of excommunication, he was sent 
in the care of an angel to find his proper place in the 
nether world. But with his rare conversational powers 
and gracious manners he transformed every place he 
reached; the fiends turned friends at his call. The black 
angels imitated his manners, and the good angels journeyed 
far to see him and were ready to live where he did. He 
was put in the lowest hell, but with the same result, and 
at last the angel returned with him to earth, declaring 
that there was no place where he could be punished. In 
every place he remained the kindly, gentlemanly Basle. 
The pope revoked his excommunication, canonized him as 
a saint, and sent him to heaven. We would not teach 
that there are no gentlemen in hell ; if there are, it will be 
all the more terrible for them to fall to such depths from 
the heights of the world; but the monk Basle represents 
the power of a good-mannered, courteous, kind-hearted 
man or woman; such a one is a transformer, and to make 
the work eternal one must himself be transformed into 
the likeness of the transfigured One, whom an English 
poet well declared "the first true gentleman that ever 
breathed. " 



126 The Eternal Building. 

Cheerfulness. 

" Be of good cheer. " It is the command of the Lord, 
and this world is his world. Until God dies there is no 
occasion for you to lengthen your face as though the uni- 
versal funeral had begun. " Every man you meet looks 
as if he'd gone out to borrow trouble, with plenty of it on 
hand," said a French lady driving in New York. They 
were thieves, every one. They robbed their fellow-men of 
moral sunshine, of the brightness of that personal elec- 
tricity which should make every life a steadily glowing 
incandescent lamp. The time is past when we are com- 
pelled to groan in order to worship; we are no longer 
called to pull faces as long as yardsticks for the glory of 
God. He gets no glory out of melancholy, and a sour 
visage and morose disposition make a poor evangelist. 
Indeed, a sour visage is not even Christian. A scowl is 
diabolical. A sneer is Satanic. " Many Christians do 
greatly wrong themselves with a dull and heavy kind of 
sullenness; who, not suffering themselves to delight in 
any worldly thing, are thereupon so heartless that they 
delight in nothing. These men, like too careless guests, 
when they are invited to an excellent banquet lose their 
dainties for want of a stomach, having lost their stomach 
for want of exercise. A good conscience keeps always 
good cheer; he cannot choose but fare well that hath it, 
unless he lose his appetite with neglect and slothfulness. 
It is a shame for us Christians not to find as much joy in 
God as worldlings do in their farces, merriments, and 
lewd wretches in the practice of their sins." * The poet 
Carpani asked Haydn how it was that his music always 
had a cheerful ring. The composer replied: "I cannot 
make it otherwise. I write according to my thoughts; 
when I think upon God my heart is so full of joy that the 

* Robert Hall. 




OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 



He was a merchant of happinesk 

"There's a good time coming, boys, a good time coming 
Let us aid it all we can, every woman, every man." 

— Macray. 



Cheerfulness. 127 

notes dance and leap, as it were, from my pen, and since 
God has given me a cheerful heart it will be pardoned me 
if I serve him with a cheerful spirit." Aye, the world will 
more than pardon the man of the cheerful spirit. It will 
fall in love with him, and whom it loves it honors. "A 
merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance," and it mak- 
eth merry the hearts of others and brings cheer to their 
faces. " He that is merry of heart hath a continual feast," 
and his feast is spread for the enjoyment of many. " A 
merry heart doeth good like a medicine. " Dr. Merryheart 
is always welcome. His pills are more to be prized than 
pellets of gold, and his prescriptions are sure cures for the 
aches of a world. 

The merry of heart have smiles on their faces, and 
smiles are forms of salutations that angels might covet. 
Take lessons, then, in smiling; remembering always that 
you must sweeten the source if you would sweeten the 
stream. " John," said an artist to a Chinaman, unwill- 
ingly serving as a model, "smile. If you don't look 
pleasant, I'll not pay you." " No usee," grumbled John. 
"If Chinamanee feelee ugly allee time, he lookee ugly." 
Get your heart right, and give it the right of way to your 
face and eyes. Let the sunshine glow there; then wear it. 
It is your privilege. It has the "quality of mercy; " it is 
twice blessed. It blesses its possessor and all who come 
under its benign influence; it is a daily boon to him who 
wears it, and a constant overflowing benediction to all his 
friends. Men and women, youth and children, seek the 
friendship of the sunny-faced. All doors are open to those 
who smile. All social circles welcome cheeriness. A 
sunny face is an open sesame to heart and home. By 
it burdens are lightened, cares dispelled, sorrows banished, 
and hope made to reign triumphant where fear, doubt, and 
despondency held high carnival. Get the glow and radiance 
from such nearness to the throne as God permits to his own. 



128 The Eternal Building. 

Bring from a holy and divine communion a face luminous, 
and let it glow and shine on all around. " A little child on 
the street of a great city, wishing to cross at a point where 
the surging throng and the passing vehicles made the feat 
dangerous to the strong, and especially so to the weak, 
paused, hesitated, and then asked a sunny-faced gentle- 
man to carry her across. It was the sunny face that won 
the child's confidence." * And remember, young architect 
of the greatest building in the world, that it is this con- 
fidence of others in yourself that you must win if your 
building is ever to lift its pinnacled heights to the sun. 

Not only smile, but learn to laugh. Not merely to grow 
fat yourself, but to put flesh on the ribs of others. He 
who starts a good laugh on its journey round the world 
aids the race far more than the discoverer of a patent 
cure-all. "If everybody knew the power of laughter as 
a health tonic and life prolonger, the tinge of sadness which 
now clouds the American face would largely disappear, and 
thousands of physicians would find their occupation gone. 
The power of laughter was given us to serve a wise pur- 
pose in our economy. It is nature's device for exercising 
the internal organs and giving us pleasure at the same 
time. Laughter begins in the lungs and diaphragm, set- 
ting the liver, stomach, and other internal organs into a 
quick, jelly-like vibration, which gives a pleasant sensa- 
tion and exercise almost equal to horseback riding. The 
heart beats faster, sends the blood bounding through the 
body, increases the respiration, and gives warmth and 
glow to the whole system. Laughter brightens the eye, 
increases the perspiration, expands the chest, forces the 
poisoned air from the least used lung cells, and tends to 
restore that exquisite poise or balance which we call 
health, and which results from the harmonious action of 
all the functions of the body. This delicate poise, which 

* Epworth Herald. 



Cheerfulness. 129 

may be destroyed by a sleepless night, a piece of bad news, 
by grief or anxiety, is often wholly restored by a good, 
hearty laugh. A jolly physician is often better than his 
pills." * The owner of a pet monkey was dying of diph- 
theria. Every effort of medical skill to destroy the life- 
sapping membrane in his throat had been fruitless. About 
his bedside his family gathered to bid him farewell and 
watch his end. The monkey was allowed to enter ; he 
was a masterly mimic, and seeing all in tears and grief, he, 
perched upon the footboard, also tried to be sad. It was 
a very ludicrous sort of grief, and caused the dying man 
to laugh uproariously. That laugh saved his life, for it 
tore the membrane from his throat. 

Ef you feel like bein' blue, 

Better laugh ; 
Sighs won't bring sunshine to you — 

Better laugh. 
You can't conquer fate with frowns 
In a fight of fifty rounds ; 
So in all yer ups and downs 

Better thing to do, by half, 

Is jest to laugh. 

When your burden's hard to bear, 

Better grin. 
Curses ain't no cure fer care — 

Better grin. 
When your team, 'at orter pull, 
Balks, don't git onmerciful 
An' splash an' splash aroun'. For you'll 

Find the surest way to win 

Is jest ter grin. 

When you think uv cussin', don't ! 

Better smile. 
When skeeters bite and fishes won't, 

Better smile. 
Ef yer hook an' line get stuck 
On the limb, ur some bad luck, 
Only way ter show yer pluck, 

'Stead uv grumblin' all the while, 

Is jist to smile. 

— Chicago Record. 



Marden, Pushing to the Front. 



130 The Eternal Building. 

But there isn't anything to laugh at in the world! Man 
is born to trouble, not to laughter. All music should have 
a doleful strain, for was not David's harp tuned to solemn 
sound ? " Is this vile world a friend to grace ? " " There, 
there, Mr. Sulphur, the devil is doing much more business 
than we like him to do, but the pit is not smoking the 
world, even yet. That is not a smoky character, nor a 
dirty-brown desire, nor a cloudy ambition, nor a dismal 
deed, that you think you see, while your face goes meas- 
uring space with a yardstick. It is not even all ' in your 
eye.' It's in your glasses. Off with them. Stop snuffing 
brimstone and meanness for a while and take a good, 
strong whiff of the brightness and decency all about you. 
Shorten your face. Smile. . . . Off with your dark glasses. 
What! you can't stand the full glare of the sun ? Bless 
you! how, then, are you to stand in the full glory of the 
Sun of Righteousness, who is even now risen to dispel all 
gloom with the sunshine of grace ? You must see things 
as God sees them; therefore you must learn to look at 
them in the bright light in which he views them. Train 
your eyes to glory, or you will be dazzled out of true 
vision for all eternity. Now quit your sniveling. Smile! 
The shine on that landscape is not blue; it's golden 
with all the radiance of a full noon sun. Your glasses 
are making a fool of you. Get them off. Pulverize 
those blue crystals. Take a good look at the sun; blink, 
if need be, but stand up straight and look at things as 
God makes them, and you will find the world is not so 
blue after all." * 

Keep your troubles to yourself; your neighbors have 
plenty of their own. Do you really enjoy the visits 
Aunty Doleful and Brother Misery pay you occasionally ? 
No ! Well, then, why in the world do you go out calling 
with your ills and sorrows on your tongue ? Real sorrow 

* Lemmon, in Golden Rule. 



Cheerfulness. 131 

is too sacred to be gossiped about; sham sorrow is only 
croaking. Leave that to the frogs. Even they will not 
croak in running water, and God has plenty of clear, run- 
ning streams of cheer in the world. Get into them. It 
won't make other people's jaws feel a bit better to know 
that you have the toothache, and if you tell some persons 
you have the rheumatism, they, too, will get lame before 
you leave. When Kaiser Frederick was suffering unto his 
death all Germany had the sore throat. Persons have 
been shot dead with blank cartridges. Don't go around 
afflicting folks. Move out of Grumble Street. You can 
still find a house on Thanksgiving Avenue. Up there 
you will find it far more healthy. The air is purer, sun- 
light brighter, neighbors pleasanter, and life a thing of 
joy. Your food will taste better, sleep be more sweet, and 
home become a paradise. As a little girl was eating her 
dinner the golden rays of the sun fell on her spoon. After 
putting the spoon in her mouth she exclaimed, "O, mamma, 
I've swallowed a whole spoonful of sunshine ! " Take 
several tablespoonfuls at each meal. 

You will never sell goods if you predict a panic. If you 
deliver your goods in a hearse, your business will soon need 
one also. A man cannot be a pessimist and the advance 
agent of prosperity at the same time. If the world is 
going to end in December, what's the use of electing you 
Congressman or pathmaster in November ? You must cry 
up the future if you expect the future to cry you up. The 
age just ahead is the golden age to the cheerful man whose 
ship is sailing in. Molasses will catch more flies than 
vinegar. "Charlie, what makes you so sweet?" asked a 
mother of her little boy. "Idesswhen God made me 
out of dust he put a little thugar in." The fellows who 
keep the "thugar" in them are the fellows that win in the 
world. It takes just this sweetness to look on the bright 
side of things, and the bright side of things is always 



132 The Eternal Building. 

nearest to the right side of things. Look out for them 
and pass them on. You will never pass this way but once ; 
keep cheering as you go. Sydney Smith, suffering tortures 
from his "gout, asthma, and seven other maladies," kept 
up his good spirits, and in one of his last letters wrote: 
" If you hear of sixteen or eighteen pounds of flesh want- 
ing an owner, they belong to me. I look as though a 
curate had been taken out of me." A soldier, looking at 
a bullet hole in his leg, exclaimed: "Well, that's a fancy 
hole. That'll get me a furlough— just what my wife 
wanted. My ! won't she be pleased ! " When the neigh- 
bors of a man who had fallen and broken his leg called to 
commiserate him he cheerily replied, "I thank God it 
wasn't my neck." 

"Give us, give us the man who sings at his work. 
Be his occupation what it may, he is more than equal to 
any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullen- 
ness. He will do more in the same time; he will do it 
better; he will persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible 
of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars are 
said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. 
Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past 
calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts, to be per- 
manently useful, must be uniformly joyous — a spirit all 
sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because 
bright."* 

Sing, then, at your work. The cheerful are the real pos- 
sessors of the earth. Many a hostler takes more delight 
in the horses than their owner. Many a housekeeper 
gets more joy out of the house than the mistress. The 
world really belongs to those who enjoy it. A woman and 
a man visited a lumber yard situated on the bank of a 
dirty stream. " How good these pine boards smell ! " ex- 
claimed the lady. "Bah ! just smell the river," said the 

*Carlyle. 



I 



Promptness. 133 

man. " No, thank you. I prefer to smell the pine 
boards." That is the principle for one who would make 
the best of life. Smell, hear, see, taste, get, the best 
things, and you will find with Hume that such a habit of 
looking on the best side of things is better than a thousand 
pounds a year. 

The weary world's a cheery place 

For those with hearts to win it; 
Thank God, there's not a human face 

But has some laughter in it ! 
The soul that comes with honest mirth, 

Though health and fortune vary, 
Brings back the childhood of the earth, 

And keeps it sound and merry. 

The plodding world's an eager place 

For those with wit to use it; 
Where all are bidden to the race 

Let him who dare refuse it ! 
The simplest task the hand can try, 

The dullest round of duty, 
Knowledge can amply glorify, 

And art can crown with beauty. 

A busy, bonny, kindly place 

Is this rough world of ours 
For those who love and work apace, 

And fill their hands with flowers; 
To kind and just and grateful hearts 

The present grace is given 
To find a heaven in themselves, 

And find themselves in heaven ! 

— Christian Herald. 

Promptness. 
"On the clock of time there is but one word — NOW." 
You are living in a prompt universe; aye, you are living be- 
cause the universe is never other than punctual. Let it cease 
to be punctual, and chaos would again reign supreme. 
Every one of the million suns sweeps round its appointed 
orbit in the heavens with never a second's variance from 
its appointed time. Science has scheduled the round trip 
of the sun of our system, and it is on time to a second at 
every station of its more than one hundred and eighty mil- 



134 The Eternal Building. 

lion mile route. It rises and sets true to itself century 
after century with never a halt for laggards. Even the 
comets that call on us only once in a hundred or a thou- 
sand years are never a day ahead or behind their pledged 
visiting time. The heavens are God's timekeepers; by 
them the earth sets her clocks and marks the intervals of 
life. The heavens that declare the glory of God do also 
declare his promptness. The Lord's business requireth 
haste, but is never hurried ; because for everything there is a 
time, and the business of the universe is always done on 
time. Christ was a model of promptness. The keynote 
of the story of his life as written by Mark, whose gospel 
has been well styled " The Gospel of the Servant," is the 
word " straightway. " Christ never dallied. One thing 
done and done with the promptness that decreed the 
punctuality of the stars, and the Master gave himself to 
the doing of the next thing. Governor Andrew was but 
copying this heavenly model when he lived so that he 
could truthfully affirm, "The only question which I can 
entertain is what to do; and when that question is an- 
swered the other is what next to do." It was this prompt- 
ness of the great war governor of the old Bay State that 
proved him the man for the hour and won for him the last- 
ing friendship of Lincoln. On Monday, April 15, 1861, he 
received Lincoln's call for troops; the next Sunday morn- 
ing he could telegraph, "All the regiments demanded from 
Massachusetts are already either in Washington or in 
Fortress Monroe or on their way to the defense of the 
capital. " 

If you are going to win and maintain the respect, aid, 
and good will of your fellow-men, you must not allow your- 
self to become a thief, prowling around always a little be- 
hindhand, robbing people of what you never can return. 
If you steal a man's purse, you can return it or its value, 
but the hour stolen is passed beyond all recovery. As 



Promptness. 135 

Smiles writes, " Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, 
lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance, but lost 
time is gone forever." * If you do not value time yourself 
and plan your own time and stick to your schedule, you will 
rob everyone with whom you make an appointment. " If 
a man has no regard for the time of other men," said 
Greeley, ' ' why should he have for their money? What is the 
difference between taking a man's hour and taking his five 
dollars? There are many men to whom each hour of the busi- 
ness day is worth more than five dollars. " When you have 
kept your man waiting five minutes you need not be surprised 
to find him so out of humor with you that he will refuse to 
sign your subscription, buy your goods, or give you the cov- 
eted job. Waiting is always annoying, but it is far more so 
when you know that you are so losing time as to derange 
all your plans; for a man thus annoyed to favor you would 
be a miracle. You do not deserve favor, but punishment. 
You have no right to waste the time of others, even if you 
regard it lightly yourself. The man who is not punctual in 
keeping his appointments soon becomes a nuisance to so- 
ciety, and society will soon bury him in the oblivion of fail- 
ure. A committee of eight ladies, who acted as the 
managers of a relief institution, agreed to meet at twelve 
o'clock. Seven were on hand at the appointed hour; the 
eighth was fifteen minutes late, and entered with the usual 
apology, " Really my time slipped away before I knew it; 
I hope your goodness will excuse me." One of the others 
had the courage to answer, " Had you only lost a quarter 
of an hour, it would have been only your own concern; but 
in this case the lost time must be multiplied by eight, for you 
have caused each of us a loss, so that you have really de- 
stroyed two hours by your failure to be punctual." It 
would be well if all such folks were treated as Washington 
and Napoleon treated those who were ready to steal time 

* Self-Help. 



136 The Eternal Building. 

from them. When the first President invited members of 
Congress to dine with him they sometimes arrived late, 
and, to their mortification, found the President already eat- 
ing. "My cook," he would say, " never asks if the guests 
have arrived, but if the hour has arrived." Napoleon once 
invited his marshals to dine with him. As they had not ar- 
rived at the appointed time, he sat down and ate without 
them. He was just rising when they entered, and said, 
"Gentlemen, it is now past time for dinner; let us proceed 
to the council chamber." 

Punctuality is the life of business. This is the maxim of 
the commercial world, yet it is even more true that punc- 
tuality is the life of a man who would win in the world. 
You must meet the world on time; sunrise will never be 
postponed until you are ready to get out of bed. The sun 
will shoot out the radiance of noon, even if you have not had 
your breakfast. The world will not wait on you; you must 
wait on the world. Two minutes late at the bank, and 
your note is already protested. A little behindhand at the 
directors' meeting, and the control has passed to others. 
A moment too late to make the siding or the switch, and 
the train is a wreck and passengers mangled or dead. Just 
a little too late is eternally too late. " The mill can never 
grind with the water that has passed. " You can never grasp 
success after she has passed your door and caught you nap- 
ping. Father Time, you know, is an old fellow with swift 
wings, and he always flies fast. He can only be detained 
by grasping that solitary tuft of hair that grows in front. 
You must catch him by the forelock or not at all. Imagine 
him with a tail and you trying to get on by grasping it, 
swinging about like the fellow who has " caught the train " 
by the hand rail of the last car! Hamilton has painted the 
picture of such an unfortunate creature. " A singular mis- 
chance has happened to some of our friends. At the in- 
stant when he ushered them into existence God gave them 



Promptness. 137 

a work to do, and he also gave them a competency of time; 
so much that if they began at the right moment, and wrought 
with sufficient vigor, their time and their work would end 
together. But a good many years ago a strange misfortune 
befell them. A fragment of their allotted time was lost. 
They cannot tell what became of it, but, sure enough, it has 
dropped out of existence; for just like two measuring lines 
laid alongside, the one an inch shorter than the other, their 
work and their time run parallel, but the work is always 
ten minutes in advance of the time. They are not irregu- 
lar. They are never too soon. Their letters are posted 
the very minute after the mail is closed. They arrive at 
the wharf just in time to see the steamboat off. They come 
in sight of the station just as the train is moving. They 
do not break any engagement nor neglect any duty, but 
they systematically go about too late, and usually too late 
by the same fatal interval." 

Is this your photograph ? Then you would be wise to 
order your coffin; delay to do so, and you will be too late 
even with your funeral, for a man ought to be buried when 
he makes a miss — that means a mess — of everything. 
"My watch was a little slow," said Washington's secre- 
tary, in apology for tardiness. " Then you must get a 
new watch or I a new secretary." That is, bury yourself 
or come to time. 

Promptness wins leadership. It always commands suc- 
cess. It is the fighting captain that spurs all the other 
virtues to the charge and plants the standard on the height 
at just the right moment to win the day. "The prompt 
man is always up to time, in advance of time, or continues 
constantly abreast of time. Foot to foot, where Time im- 
prints his footsteps, there, side by side with him, is the 
prompt and ready man." * "I have always been a quarter 
of an hour before my time," said Nelson, "and it has 

* Maguire. 



138 The Eternal Building. 

made a man of me." "If I had to mount guard at ten, I 
was ready at nine; never did any man or anything wait 
one minute for me."* Napoleon said that he beat the 
Austrians because they did not know the value of five 
minutes. "Every moment lost," he declared, "gives an 
opportunity for misfortune." " There is in every person's 
life a crucial hour in the day, which must be employed 
instead of wasted if the day is to be saved. . . . Success is 
the child of two very plain parents — punctuality and ac- 
curacy. There are critical moments in every successful 
life when, if the mind hesitate or a nerve flinch, all will be 
lost."f 

"To-morrow" is the biggest thief in the world. The 
devil must have jumped with delight when he coined that 
excuse and hinged it on to the tongues of men. To-day 
is not only the day of salvation, but it is the day for the 
execution of all thy good resolutions and the performance 
of all the work that the day brings. " ' Hell/ a wise man 
said, * is paved with good intentions. ' Pluck up the stones, 
ye sluggards, and break the devil's head with them." J Do 
it to-day. Simply to intend is never to mend. Waste not 
in postponing the force that would in the same time do the 
thing postponed. You will never have to hunt for the 
letter if you answer it before it is lost. The business of 
the world is done by men who never allow letters to ac- 
cumulate. They attend to their business as it comes to 
them. Imagine a grocer saying, "Come in to-morrow 
and I'll sell you a barrel of flour," when you have the cash 
in your hand to buy it to-day! A fool ? of course, and so 
are you if you are everlastingly saying, " To-morrow I'll 
do it." To-morrow it will be drudgery; to-day it would 
have been a pleasure were you not too dawdling to enjoy 
yourself. To-morrow it may be put off again, and in the 
end be never don e. A Frenchman was going to write a 

* Cobbett. t Marden, Pushing to the Front. % Guesses at Truth. 




SIR WALTER SCOTT. 



"Take the instant by the forward top." — Shakespeare. 

Scott broke the neck of the day with the dawn, and drank 
the nectar of accomplishment for breakfast. 



Promptness. 139 

history of his nation. He accumulated a vast library and 
jotted down voluminous notes. "When are you going to 
begin to write ? " asked his friends. ' ' Very soon, " he would 
reply. He died at seventy with his history unbegun. 

"To-morrow, didst thou say? Go to; I will not hear 
of it. To-morrow! 'tis a sharper who stakes his penury 
against thy plenty — who takes thy ready cash and pays 
thee naught but wishes, hopes, and promises — the currency 
of idiots. To-morrow ! It is a period nowhere to be found 
in all the hoary registers of time, unless, perchance, in the 
fool's calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds 
society with those that own it. 'Tis fancy's child, and 
folly is its father — wrought of such stuffs as dreams are, 
and baseless as the fantastic visions of the evening."* 
Who gave thee surety of to-morrow ? Save thy soul to- 
day, and do the work appointed you to-day. You know 
not what to-morrow will bring forth. "How do you 
manage to accomplish so much ? " some one asked Sir 
Walter Raleigh. "When I have anything to do I go and 
do it." Farmers' boys would have more time for fishing 
if they would hoe and weed instead of mope and groan. 
It often takes as much time to put a thing off as to do it. 
Scott was a To-day man ; by breakfast he had broken the 
neck of the day and got a good sip of its best wine. " By 
the street of By and By one arrives at the house of 
Never! " f " Take the instant by the forward top." J Do 
things to-day. "The thing that's done is not to do."|| 
Why rob yourself or others of the joy of having a thing 
done ? Bishop Wilson, hearing that a brother clergyman 
was in need, asked a friend to take fifty pounds to him. 
"I will deliver it to him to-morrow morning," said the 
friend. "You will oblige me," returned the bishop, "by 
calling immediately. Think, sir, of how much importance 
a good night's rest may be to the poor man." 

* Cotton. + Cervantes. % Shakespeare. || Scotch Proverb. 



140 The Eternal Building. 

The Purpose of Man's Social Endowment. 

Remember, you may manifest good manners, good 
cheer, and promptness without much brains. We are 
considering these simply in their social relations. Intel- 
lect will increase the value of your social equipment, but 
unless you are grounded well in these social virtues, no 
amount of intellect will bring you success. 

You will, also, very likely fail of success if you fail to 
grasp the purpose for which man is endowed with this 
social nature. Man's social nature makes him companion- 
able. To whom ? His neighbors. How many are they ? 
There is the nut for you to crack. There is a certain 
thing that opens your eyes every morning, and, strange as 
it may seem, that same thing opens the eyes of every 
other human being in the world. There is a certain thing 
that is the chief producer of all your food, fuel, and cloth- 
ing, and that same thing does the same for every other 
human being. When a number of you sit under the same 
lamp to read, or toast your shins by the same fire, you 
count yourselves neighbors, do you not ? When you live 
in the same house and eat at the same table you are one 
family, are you not ? When your clothes are cut off the 
same piece you are pretty near twins, aren't you ? Well, 
then, surely everyone who reads the news with blinking 
eyes by the light of the same sun, and eats food that this 
one great farmer raises, and wears clothes that these sun- 
beams spin, all these must be neighbors, even though their 
dwelling place be America or Africa or Australia. Every 
man is the neighbor of every other man in the world. 
Aye, more ; let us face the full truth, for it is to state and 
live this full truth that we are socially endowed — every 
man is the brother of every other man in the world. The 
race is a brotherhood, and the social provision in the life 
of each individual of the race is the warp on which the 



The Purpose of Man's Social Endowment. 141 

delicate fabric of human brotherhood is to be made into 
tapestry for the adornment of the world. 

Every man's field is the world. The hearts of all the 
race are the strings of the harp on which you may play. 
Individually you are in a shell; socially you are in an in- 
finitely large place. This gives you wondrously increased 
possibility of success. You may be a failure locally, yet 
succeed nationally or internationally. Jesus was a failure 
in Nazareth, but a wonder throughout Galilee and Judea. 
In another sense he was a failure in Palestine, but a suc- 
cess in the world. The whole world, then, is before you. 
You need not stay in the one spot where you were born. 
Success there may have been preempted by others before 
you were born ; but it is not only true that there is always 
room at the top; there is also always room somewhere in 
the world for a man to find the vantage ground where he 
can woo success. It is surprising how the annihilation of 
space that has made the world so much smaller has in- 
creased the personal influence and power of men. The 
social economist of Australia becomes the schoolmaster of 
the distant nations of Europe and America. Rontgen 
rays, discovered in Germany, flash in laboratories at the 
four corners of the earth before the week ends. Caine 
amid the bleak peaks of Manxland and Stevenson on a 
little speck of earth amid the dancing waves of the South 
Pacific write stories that run in the same mail with those 
from the pen of the Scotchman of Liverpool and from the 
poet of the jungle to the uttermost parts of the earth. 
Moody conducts evangelistic meetings in Boston, New 
York, and Philadelphia at the same time, passing daily 
from city to city for their supervision. Meyer runs across 
the Atlantic ferry as one preacher would to his neighbor 
to give two weeks' service in revival meetings. Murray, 
having captured the world with the pen that spread ink in 
a nameless nook in South Africa, runs away from the land 



142 The Eternal Building. 

of darkness to deepen the impressions made in a month of 
service at Northfield. Clark within a twelvemonth tells 
the story of Christian Endeavor beside the Hudson, the 
Thames, the Rhine, Rhone, Seine, and Danube, the 
Bosphorus, the Ganges, the Vaal, and near the Congo, the 
Mississippi, and the Sacramento; speaking in nearly 
every country of Europe, in India, in South Africa, and 
beside both of the great American seas. In London there 
gather the premiers of every colony over which flies the 
flag of England to follow their queen to the steps of St. 
Paul's to give thanks to God for the long reign of a noble 
woman. The everyday wonders of the business world 
are past all telling; they are more marvelous than the seven 
wonders of the ancients. 

We can no longer shut our eyes to the fact that the 
world, and the whole of it, is the field for man's enter- 
prise, and only in the recognition of the fact of human 
brotherhood is there hope of the amicable and profitable 
prosecution of that enterprise. The plague in Bombay or 
at Mecca means the black death in Europe and cholera in 
America. We can only keep ourselves as we keep our 
brother. If he won't wash his face, we must do it for him, 
for he means to continue to live in the same house with 
us, and is bound to eat at the same table. You will wash 
him easier by the strategy of cheerfulness and companion- 
ship than by force and harshness. Hard dirt hurts when 
it hits you; it is seldom wise to tease your brother into 
throwing it. Besides, if you do the washing, you must 
furnish the soap and the towels;, but if you lead him to 
wash himself, he will pay for both, and you can gold-line 
your own bathtub with your commission. Thus it is that 
it pays business to stand in well with the missionaries. 
If they would only open their eyes to see it, business men 
would understand that missionaries are the real advance 
agents of prosperity. Hawaii would never have been rich 



The Purpose of Man's Social Endowment. 143 

enough to pay for a revolution, or respectably enough 
dressed to appear at Washington, if missionaries had not 
gone there sixty years ago. Civilization is the art of 
making people want things, and is thus the foster mother 
of commerce. God knowing how much faster a man will 
run, and how much better he will behave himself while he 
is running, if he is to be paid with the riches of this world 
as well as with those of the next, has granted to commerce 
the right to travel in the same train with Christianity, that 
the day may more speedily come when all the world shall 
as brothers be. 

To organize the human family into one great loving 
whole has been the far-off divine event for which all things 
in the history of the race have been preparing the way and 
seeding the fields of the world. Pestilences and famines 
and earthquakes and fires and floods and wars have all made 
their contribution to this coming glory. Alexander and 
Charlemagne and Napoleon worked mightily toward this end 
in breaking up the narrow and provincial groupings of the 
nations of their times and paving the way for wider boun- 
daries and more swift and ready exchange of the products 
both of the field and the brain. The history of the race is 
the history of this process of preparation. Every great 
man and every great movement has helped its forward 
march. When Abraham rose up from Ur of the Chaldees 
and moved across the plains of Syria to lay the foundations 
of government in Palestine the race made its first great 
stride toward wider brotherhood. Egypt, Assyria, and 
Persia each contributed much to the common fund. They 
accumulated wealth that caught the gaze of conquerors 
and enriched the race even in their destruction. The 
fleets that made Phoenicia the Britain of the ancient world 
sped from port to port as do the ships of to-day, merely 
for gain, but, like them also, they linked the known world 

together, and did much to increase the relations of men 
10 



144 The Eternal Building. 

with their fellows. "The Jews, by their compact social 
organization, lifted their national life into a great civiliza- 
tion. This civilization they sought to make provincial; 
they sought to fence themselves off, with all they had ac- 
cumulated of devotion and law and literature, from the 
rest of mankind. But their social pulverization, due to 
their sins, helped forward universal companionship. They 
moved out into other parts of the world. They settled 
along the Black Sea and the Caspian. They went into 
Asia Minor and back into Syria. They took up their abode 
in Alexandria and along the Mediterranean. Wherever 
they went they carried their civilization ; their synagogue, 
in which to teach their knowledge of the one God ; their 
Moses, to guide by his law their conduct; and their David, 
to soothe with his songs their sorrow."* But more, they 
carried with them wherever they went a great expectancy 
of a Coming One, and when he came, in those synagogues, 
out of that law of Moses, and from those songs of Israel's 
singer, the heralds of Christianity could proclaim the Gospel 
of the Elder Brother and teach men to say, "Our Father 
in heaven." 

Greece also gave much. The language and philosophy 
of the lovers of beauty were like flowers from the garden 
of the gods, and were sent forth to bear fruit in every 
desert place. The love of freedom that made glorious 
the fame of Attica did for her times what the like passion in 
the hearts of the Swiss of the present century has done for 
theirs. Rome has had no rival in this partition-destroying. 
Her roads ran everywhere like the rails of our age, and 
good roads are destroyers of narrowness of view. Men 
have only to know other men to like them, even though 
they call things by different names, and good roads are 
the highways to such knowledge and good will. England 
leads the list of modern nations in barrier-removing. Not 

*Lee, The Making of a Man. 




CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

" There's a brave fellow ! There's a man of pluck ! 
A man who's not afraid to say his say, 
Though a whole town's against him." 

—Longfellow. 

Columbus had his say. and proved to one half of the world 
that his say was right by showing it the other. Pluck was 
master of the Pinta. Tenacity by Columbus brought the ends 
of the earth together. 



The Purpose of Man's Social Endowment. 145 

for love of men, but for love of gold, has her flag gone 
round the globe; but you cannot win much gold in this 
world without being good-natured, and thus the gold- 
winning desires of Englishmen have been made to 
work for the common weal of all men. The good-natured 
English trader has been a mighty aid in bringing about 
the better relations everywhere manifest to-day in the com- 
merce between the civilized and the partly civilized peoples. 
America's one great venture in opening the doors of Japan 
has already reaped a glorious harvest, and none would 
thank her more heartily for the sending of Commodore 
Perry than the Japanese themselves. 

Following the Dark Ages came the age of marvels, and 
the final epoch of this age is not yet in sight. How much for 
the good of all the race this age has brought us! Gunpow- 
der, dynamite, and a hundred and one newer and more 
powerful explosives that make easy the tunneling of moun- 
tains and excavation of canals and destruction of Hell Gates 
and Iron Gates and other obstructions of man's forward 
march. The mariner's compass and world-encircling naviga- 
tion that have made mere ferries of all the seas. The print- 
ing press, with its booksand papers — wisdom for the millions 
in streams as unceasing as Niagara; that, linked with the 
wonders of photography and the masterly word-painting 
of well-trained scribes, spreads before us at trifling cost 
far more knowledge of the world than Marco Polo ever 
gained. Steam, with its engines and revolution, not only 
in travel, but in manufactures. Electricity, with its 
light, heat, telegraph, telephone, cable, motive power, and 
myriad other applications. The sewing machine, making 
it at last possible for a wife to be a queen. (Keep up 
heart, sisters; the dishwasher that will wash and wipe will 
yet appear. If Howe was blessed, what a crown awaits 
this next benefactor ! ) The reaper that clears the field in 
a day and bags the winnowed grain as it rolls over the 



146 The Eternal Building. 

golden field. This age has brought us, also, the telescope 
and microscope and spectroscope and phonograph and 
kinetoscope, and countless other aids to the knowledge of 
ourselves and of others and of the world and the universe 
in which we live and where we must succeed or fail. 

Thus to-day we find the world open to every man. 
This is the answer of God to the outcry of our social 
nature. I am not surprised at the much-remarked unrest 
of the present day; at the intense longing to get on 
everywhere cropping out; of the very passion for success 
that ambition and aspiration often boil with. Never in 
all the history of the race was such success possible as 
is possible to-day. Never before were there so many 
open doors. Never before were there so many glittering 
prizes. Never has there been so wide a field and such di- 
versified opportunity. If America during the nineteenth 
century has been but another name for opportunity, the 
world of the twentieth century will be but another name 
for importunity. It longs, it yearns, it groans, to be made 
better, and in this is the answer to the passion for success 
that is aflame in the race. As the light is for the eye and 
sound for the ear, the wing of the bird for the air and 
the fin of the fish for the sea, so the open heart of the 
world is the answer to the aspirations of the social nature 
of man. Somewhere in the world there is a place for you, 
a friendly place, a place where success waits to crown you 
if you strive with all your powers. As the perturbations 
of Uranus made known the existence of Neptune, so the 
yearnings of your social nature declare that there is in 
existence a supply to your want; cease not in your quest 
until you find it. But mark this. Neptune is bound to 
you just as truly as you are bound to Neptune. You can- 
not get away from each other. You are members of the 
same family. Fighting won't pay. Civil war, we say, is 
horrible. True. But if you will keep before your eyes, as 



The Purpose of Man's Social Endowment. 147 

God does, the fact of human brotherhood, you will see 
that every war is a civil war; a family row of fiendish pro- 
portions. It is folly to tell me that a man born in Cali- 
fornia or Alaska or Hawaii is my brother, but that the 
man born in Canada is not. Yet all the nations of Europe 
are living in closer geographical relations, with more 
wants in common, than New York and California. When 
a mob gets loose in a city the city is destroyed. Fighting 
is not a good thing for the city. When armies get loose 
in a nation a nation is destroyed. Fighting is not a good 
thing for the nation. And what is not good for the city 
and the nation is not good for the world. Keep the 
peace. The race is a brotherhood. To weave this into 
fact from theory the shuttle of time seems darting swiftly 
these days. It may be that your success in life is bound 
up in relation to the success of your brother in black or 
your sister in yellow. ^They have yearnings and aspira- 
tions also. Your Neptune may be on the other side of 
the street or on the other side of the world. You cannot 
get along alone. Success will come to you and to all men 
only as you get and keep in right relations with each other. 

But you say, " I shall be dead before then!" Never 
mind. You want success for eternity, not for time, and 
eternal success is possible only when you work according 
to God's plan, and the fashioning of the race into brother- 
hood is the purpose of God for the exercise of our social 
faculties. You can do a successful day's work even if you 
cannot rear the entire structure. That is all God requires. 

The necessity for speedily giving effect to the divine 
purpose of brotherhood is that the race may no longer 
suffer through the congestion and destruction of its sup- 
plies in any part of the world. Human brotherhood, not 
industrial socialism or commercial communism, is the cure 
of the poverty and crime-producing battle at present 
waged between hungry labor and greedy capital. The 



148 The Eternal Building. 

units of the race are out of relation with each other when 
the makers of clothes are out of work, and so out of bread, 
in one part of the world, and the growers of grain out of 
clothes in another part of the world because their grain 
cannot reach the market. The world produces enough to 
supply all its people; God sees to that. He has left to 
man to devise the means of getting this produce to the 
place of need. And all along the route that the produce 
of the world travels there are success stations for those 
who have the skill, wit, and perseverance to reach them. 
Both the man of business and the man of labor must keep 
the whole world in mind if they hope to prosper. For 
every yard the weaver works from his loom the farmer 
must work a meal out of the soil, or the weaver will go 
hungry ; and for every meal the farmer works from the 
soil the weaver must take a yard from the loom, or the 
farmer will go bare. The race is independent only in its 
just dependence upon itself. Human brotherhood, toward 
which commerce and Christianity are steadily working, 
will enable each brother to participate in the good or ill 
of all the race. Every man's life will in a certain sense 
touch every other man's life, and will thus call forth the 
best work of all. As Dr. William T. Harris puts it: " Man 
will be at work under all climes and on all soils, produc- 
ing the infinite variety of goods for the world's market. 
By the specialization and division of labor we will have 
great increase of skill and the multiplication of all prod- 
ucts. People will be at work raising coffee and drugs in 
Brazil; tea in China; creating a myriad manufactures in 
England, France, Germany, Switzerland, and America; 
growing fruits on the Mediterranean islands; these will be 
gathered by the various means of transportation and car- 
ried to all the ends of the earth, that everyone may have 
the whole earth to serve him, while on his part he renders 
service to all." 



The Wonders that are Before Us. 149 

The Wonders that are Before Us. 

As a last call to you to arouse and put forth all your so- 
cial power, look at the marvelous system of the world-wide 
intercommunication that waits to serve you to-day. 
Brotherhood — the reign of good feeling — advances with 
great speed to-day not because men are so much better 
than in other days, but because the inventions that have 
harnessed the sun's heat to our wagons, put the heart of 
the mountains red-hot into the hearts of our boats, darted 
our commands from nation to nation on the wings of the 
lightning, and that even write our signatures with pens 
hundreds of miles long, have brought all mankind face to 
face and introduced the antipodes to each other. One 
hundred and twenty-five thousand miles of submarine cable 
now bind all the continents together with cords of electric 
copper. Tens of thousands of miles of railroads link tiny 
crossroad hamlets to the heart of busy teeming cities. 
No mountain is any longer impassable. If it does not 
yield a pass, commerce will cut one through its heart. 
Steamships cross the ocean as true to schedule time as the 
captain's watch. A man can map out a journey round the 
world, and he and his mail will meet at the appointed place 
as regularly as ticks the clock. At first thought it would 
seem as if all the great things in race-linking had been 
done, but a closer survey and fuller knowledge prove that 
what has been done is but a hint of what man is now pre- 
paring to do. Like the railroad from Joppa to Jerusalem, 
which many said would never be built, but which now gives 
its almost blasphemous toot at the gate of the Holy City, 
these, too, will call the world to the commemoration of 
their completion. 

The railroad from the City of Mexico will be extended 
through Central and South America and join rails with the 
over-the-Andes railroad now in partial operation from 



ISO The Eternal Building. 

Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso. A road will be built from 
Vancouver to Bering Strait; by bridge or ferry that divid- 
ing line between the Old World and the New will be 
crossed, and a branch of the great Siberian road will con- 
nect on the Asiatic side, and the road to Europe in level 
track is before you. Then you can board the cars at Hali- 
fax, N. S., ride through the States from Maine to 
Texas, cross Mexico and Central America; reaching Colom- 
bia, branch to the left and run down through Venezuela to 
Brazil, and thence through Uruguay to Argentina. At 
Buenos Ayres you can take the train and cross the Andes to 
Chili, and then ride north along the Pacific coast for eight 
or nine thousand miles through Chili, Bolivia, Ecuador, 
Peru, Colombia, Central America, Mexico, the Californias, 
British Columbia, and Alaska to Bering Strait, without 
change of cars. Crossing the strait, you may ride on 
through Siberia to China, and thence through India and 
the East to Constantinople, or you may ride on through 
Siberia to Russia, then across Europe to the ferry for Eng- 
land, or on to Paris, Madrid, and Lisbon. Or, running 
down from St. Petersburg, you may rejoin on the east 
bank of the Bosphorus the friends who left you for the 
trip through Southern Asia, and riding to Suez, cross to 
Alexandria, do Egypt, and from Cairo take the train for 
Cape Town on the then-completed African Central. From 
Buenos Ayres to Cape Town via Bering Strait and Con- 
stantinople with scarce a change of cars ! This is no fancy. 
This is but what the engineers of the world are giving 
themselves to with all their ardor. The schedule time 
from New York to London via Siberia has already been 
announced as twenty-one days. What would the Pilgrim 
Fathers have thought of that ? The finding of the " Log 
of the Mayflower" may be due to their turning over in 
their graves. 

Even these things are but hints. There is to be a new 



The Wonders that are Before Us. 151 

ocean cable from Clew Bay, Ireland, to Greeny Island, 
Strait of Belle Isle, nineteen hundred miles long. Keep- 
ing company with this will be the ship canal around Niag- 
ara, opening the way to Quebec and the sea to the great 
grain steamers. From Quebec a railroad will run to Belle 
Isle and connect with an ocean line to Medford, Wales. 
One railroad is to run from Winnipeg across the Northwest 
Territory to the Saskatchewan River, and another from 
Winnipeg to Hudson Bay, connecting with a steamship line 
for Liverpool. The Canadian Pacific will run a line through 
the Klondike to the Yukon, and thence connect with the 
coast route by palace steamers sailing from the heart of 
Alaska to the sea. Among the tunnels to be cut are those 
under the Hudson at New York, under the St. Clair at Port 
Huron, through the Sierras from Truckee River, Nevada, 
and either by tunnel or mammoth bridge the British Chan- 
nel is to be mastered. In addition to the Panama and Nica- 
ragua canals, one or both of which are sure to come, canals 
are projected across the Isthmus of Corinth to connect the 
^Egean Sea with the Gulf of Corinth, across southern 
France from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, from Knox- 
ville, Tenn., through Alabama to the Gulf of Mexico, from 
Chicago to the Mississippi, and from Chicago to Savannah, 
or some other southern port, from the Great Lakes to New 
York either by long canal from Buffalo to the Hudson, or 
by several shorter ones, utilizing the St. Lawrence and 
Lakes George and Champlain to reach the Hudson. A 
ship railway is projected around The Dalles of the Oregon, 
and another to connect the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the 
Bay of Fundy. New steamship lines are put in operation 
to-day with the speed that marked the railway construc- 
tion of the last half of the "sixties." 

Thus the world is being knit together. We do not 
think or write or speak for ourselves alone, but for all 
the world. A new discovery in science flies like light 



152 The Eternal Building. 

from land to land with its benefaction or warning. A 
secret of the Lord discovered by the humblest anywhere 
in the world introduces its discoverer to all the race. The 
greatest speech of the World's Parliament of Religions at 
Chicago in 1893 was made by Rev. George T. Candlin, of 
Tientsin, China, of whom the world had never heard. 
Thus in science and art and literature and music and phi- 
losophy and religion, as well as in commerce, the ends of 
the earth minister to each other. Even sport demands 
the world for its gymnasium, and the Olympic games are 
revived with all the race in the lists. 

We have not yet by any means fathomed all the secrets 
of the world's provision of power for the transmission and 
transportation of man's thoughts and supplies. Tesla and 
Marconi are busy perfecting telegraphy without wires. 
Langley has built a flying machine that will fly, it having 
flapped its wings in the face of three quarters of a mile of 
air, and stopped only because the supply of fuel had been 
exhausted. When President Deareader goes to Washing- 
ton for his inauguration in 1920 he will very likely make 
the journey in a flying machine. Edison expects to get 
electricity from the disturbed conditions of the air with- 
out the use of fuel. Lord Kelvin is leading the van in 
the struggle to make what has formerly been thrown 
away enrich the people. The refuse of London is now 
burned and made to light the streets of the foggy capital. 
Colonel W T aring stated that the Street Cleaning Department 
of the Greater New York will more than meet its vast ex- 
penditure by the sale of its " sortings " and other profit- 
able use of waste. The bottom is to be knocked out of the 
Standard Oil Trust by the perfection of the many lamps 
already invented that generate their own light. The still 
greater safety of travel is assured by the latest wonder 
that keeps the train-despatcher in continuous connec- 
tion with the flying train, enabling him to give orders 




By courtesy of the Electrical Engineer, New York. 
NIKOLA TESLA. 

The twentieth-century master of the magicians. 

He has belted Niagara to ten thousand engines, and promises to trans- 
mit enormous currents of electricity over half the earth without wires. 



The Wonders that are Before Us. 153 

direct to the ears of every engineer on the road. On the 
sea, also, an improved compass will tell not only the north, 
but also the presence, within a certain distance, of any 
other vessel, making collision well-nigh impossible. 

Think of the men it will take to control and manage 
these vast world-encircling forces and enterprises. Con- 
sider the boundless opportunities for success here thrown 
open. Open your eyes to behold the prizes that are in 
sight. Some are to win them. These things will give 
wealth, place, fame, honor, and eternal praise to many. 
Will you be of the number ? The winners will be men in 
love with the world in the best sense. They will be ready 
to give themselves for the increase of human brotherhood. 
They will do it gracefully, cheerfully, promptly, for to 
give themselves otherwise would be but to invite failure. 
Arouse ye, then, men and women, boys and girls, who be- 
hold the dawn of the twentieth century. Awake ! Adorn 
thyself. Put on thy beautiful garments. Live your best 
self. Give your best service. Meet the morning with a 
smile. Greet your neighbors with a cheer. Do your 
work on the instant. Waste no time in repining. Up 
and at it. Victory is passing your way; jump into his 
chariot and ride on. 

Let me give you a last thought to ponder long and live 
always. It came out of the great heart and mind of 
Phillips Brooks: 

"There is one word of Jesus that always comes back 
to me as about the noblest thing that human lips have 
ever said upon our world, and the most comprehensive 
thing that seems to sweep into itself all the commonplace 
experiences of mankind. Do you remember when he was 
sitting with his disciples at the last supper how he lifted 
up his voice and prayed, and in the midst of his prayer 
there came these wondrous words, ' For their sakes I 
sanctified myself, that they also might be sanctified? ' The 



154 The Eternal Building. 

whole of human life is there. Shall man cultivate him- 
self ? No, not primarily. Shall man serve the world, 
strive to increase the kingdom of God in the world ? Yes, 
indeed, he shall. How shall he do it ? By cultivating 
himself, and incidentally he is thrown back upon his own 
life. * For their sakes I sanctified myself, that they also 
might be sanctified.' I am my best, not simply for 
myself, but for the world. My brethren, is there any- 
thing in all the teachings that man has had from his 
fellow-man, all that has come down to him from the lips 
of God that is nobler, that is more far reaching, than that? 
— to be my best, not simply for my own sake, but for the 
sake of the world into which, setting my best, I shall 
make that world more complete, I shall do my little part 
to renew and to recreate it in the image of God." 



THE DOME AND ITS WONDERS. 



Youth is that period in which, if you would educate men, they must be 
educated. If they are not educated, then they will not be educated, and no 
repentance can change the fact. When the plates are prepared for steel 
engravings the steel is made soft ; and then the graver works out the picture ; 
and then the plate is put into a furnace and brought to great hardness, so that 
impressions can be taken off by the hundreds without wearing it. Now, the 
time to engrave men is youth, when the plate is soft and ductile. Manhood is 
hard, and cannot be cut easily, any more than tempered steel.— Henry Ward 
Beecher. 

What has the human race been since the beginning of time ? A reader. 
For a long time he has spelled ; he spells yet ; soon he will read. This child, 
six thousand years old, has been at school from the first. Where ? In nature. 
At the beginning, having no other book, he spelled the universe. He has had 
his primary instruction from the clouds, from the firmament, from meteors, 
flowers, animals, forests, seasons, phenomena. The Ionian fisherman studies 
the wave ; the Chaldean shepherd spells the star. Then came the first books 
— a sublime advance. The book is vaster yet than that grand scene, the world ; 
for to the fact it adds the idea. If anything is greater than God seen in the 
sun, it is God seen in Homer. . . . Compulsory education is a recruitment of 
souls for the light. Henceforth all human advancement will be accomplished 
by swelling the legions of those who read. The diameter of the moral and 
ideal good corresponds always to the caliber of men's minds. In proportion 
to the worth of the brain is the worth of the heart. The book is the tool of 
this transformation. What humanity requires is to be fed with light ; such 
nourishment is found in reading. Thence the importance of the school, every- 
where adequate to civilization. The human race is at last on the point of 
spreading the book wide open. The immense human Bible, composed of all 
the prophets, of all the poets, of all the philosophers, is about to shine and 
blaze under the focus of that enormous luminous lens — compulsory education. 
— Victor Hugo \ "William Shakespeare." 






CHAPTER IV. 
THE DOME AND ITS WONDERS. 

The Need of Large Brains. 

Say, why was man so eminently raised 

Amid the vast creation — why ordained 

Through life and death to dart his piercing eye, 

With thoughts beyond the limit of his frame, 

But that th' Omnipotent might send him forth, 

In sight of mortal and immortal powers, 

As on a boundless theater, to run 

The great career of justice ; to exalt 

His generous aim to all diviner deeds, 

To chase each partial purpose from his breast, 

And through the mists of passion and of sense, 

And through the tossing tides of chance and pain, 

To hold his course unfaltering, while the voice 

Of truth and virtue, up the steep ascent 

Of Nature, calls him to his high reward, 

The applauding smiles of heaven ? The high-born soul 

Disdains to rest her heaven-aspiring wing 

Beneath its native quarry. Tired of earth 

And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft 

Through fields of air ; pursues the flying storm ; 

Rides on the volleyed lightning through the heavens, 

Or, yoked with whirlwinds and the northern blast, 

Sweeps the long track of day. 

Mind, mind alone (bear witness, earth and heaven) 

The living fountains in itself contains 

Of beauteous and sublime : here, hand in hand, 

Sit paramount the graces ; here, enthroned, 

Celestial Venus, with divinest airs, 

Invites the soul to never-fading joy. — Mark Akenside. 

'"PHE man who is to touch all the world must have brains 
* if he would touch it right. The physical and social 
powers must have a director if they are to exert them- 
selves for the best good of their possessor and his fellows. 
We have noticed some of the marvels of dynamics and 
mechanics that wait on man to carry him to success. We 
have surveyed the well-nigh infinite provision of nature 

157 



158 The Eternal Building. 

for man's physical good; we come now to study how man 
can make the best use of these. The eyes of men of to- 
day see far more than those of any previous generation. 
As infinite as was the enlargement of vision made by 
Galileo beyond that of Moses and Ptolemy has been the 
enlargement of vision made possible by those who have 
continued his labors since his death. By means of the 
camera and kinetoscope and kinematoscope we are enabled 
to behold in vivid reproduction the actual scenes of daily 
life. Only let a camera be at one end of the earth, and 
with its searching eye those at the other end may behold 
presidents doffing their hats, emperors embracing, and 
queens smiling in jubilee joy; the very breath of the horses 
speeding on a wintry day will blow from their nostrils be- 
fore us. 

The whole world has become a whispering gallery like 
the echoing Lake of Killarney. Whisper in China, and it 
is heard in England; breathe a word in South Africa, and 
we hear it in New York before it is said. Our ears are 
enlarged ; we hear all the world says, even to its veriest, 
silliest gossip. Scandal flies everywhere as swiftly as the 
secrets of science. Every man knows the next morning 
what his neighbor has been doing. If he has made an 
extra good speech, we can read it into our own ears at 
breakfast time, or we can await the arrival of the express 
and, putting a record in our phonograph, hear the man 
speak it himself. Thus, too, all the bands — Marine, 
Grenadier, Sousa's — play for us, and every soloist and 
chorus walks into our parlor. I recently ordered my din- 
ner at Plymouth Rock by speaking from a long-distance 
telephone box in Boston, forty miles away. Shades of the 
Pilgrims ! If Miles Standish could have courted from 
such a distance, he would have been married sooner. 

Our fingers have grown immensely longer. We touch 
each other from vast distances these days. A child presses 



The Need of Large Brains. 159 

her tiny fingers on a button in New York, and a dozen 
miles away Hell Gate flies to pieces. A President touches 
a button at Washington, and the rumbling of great engines 
announces the Trans-Mississippi Exhibition open. Move a 
little key so many times with yOur fingers, and you convey 
your thought to a man across the continent or beyond the 
sea, and by a touch of his fingers that reaches along the 
stretches of thousands of miles of wire he makes a key in 
your hand tick out his reply. A reporter for a London 
paper found himself locked out, and he had news that 
should appear in the morning. From the street he could 
see the light streaming from the editorial rooms, but he 
had no immediate way of communicating with that room. 
Down the street was a telegraph office, but without direct 
communication with the newspaper office. So the reporter 
touched his fingers to the ear of an operator in Edinburgh 
and bade him touch the operator in the London paper office. 
Then he crossed the street to find that via Edinburgh he 
had roused the London janitor to open the door. During 
the great blizzard a New York merchant desired to com- 
municate with his agent in Boston, but the wires along 
the coast were down, and he could not reach him. Finally 
he sent a cablegram under sea to London, had it repeated 
to Boston, and so pulled the ear of his workman. 

We smell more than our fathers. This perhaps is a very 
much mixed good, but it results in cleanliness such as 
would have tormented the ancients. Our dirtiest alleys 
are cleaner than were the main streets in the days of 
Cromwell and Louis XIV. It works a mighty decrease 
in the death rate and frees us from many a disagreeable ill. 

The race has no doubt never been in need of more tongue, 

but, needed or not, we have more to-day. If other folks 

have ears that can hear the whisperings of China and the 

breathings of South Africa, we have the tongue that can 

send the answering whisper back. There is no end to the 
11 



160 The Eternal Building. 

tongue-wagging of the day. No man has made his repu- 
tation until he has been interviewed and his syllables sent 
round the globe. Then, of course, the story must be con- 
tinued endlessly with his contradictions and explanations. 
The whole world is listening; to the press, not to Shake- 
speare, has it lent its ears, and it must hear something. 
It would be folly to expect that wisdom would be sufficient 
to always fill these ears. Let the fools chatter; they hold 
the wires for the wise men. 

Then when we think of the tongue as the organ of taste, 
how much it has enlarged ! Patrick is no longer satisfied 
with his potatoes, nor Sandy with his oatmeal, nor old 
John with his rice, nor young John with his beef. Jean 
wants more than wine, Fritz more than lager, Umberto 
more than macaroni. Sambo is not satisfied with either 
chickens, persimmons, or watermelons, and it takes the 
epicurean dishes of all creation to make Uncle Samuel 
smack his lips. Americans in South America have learned 
that boa-constrictor soup is delicious, and in France and 
Belgium they find horse and even mule sausages the peer 
of frankfurters. When John Bull comes over here he 
learns that tomatoes are fit for kings and turnips as good for 
the master as for his cow. So with the widening march of 
commerce there has come an increasing itching to the 
tongue that can only be eased by the annual discovery or 
invention of new gastronomic delicacies. 

Our legs are longer. The entire race has put on seven- 
league boots. We wake up in Boston, breakfast in New 
York, dine in Washington, and take tea in South Carolina. 
We cross the continent in five days and the Atlantic in six. 
You can breakfast in London and dine the next afternoon 
in Rome. A reporter has taken down a great speech in 
Chicago one evening and been in in time to describe a great 
opera at New York the next. Our grandmothers began 
the century at the pedals — of spinning wheels ; their grand- 



The Brain an Inheritor. 161 

daughters are ending it at the pedals — of bicycles; and, with 
all the world awheel, distance is getting small indeed. 
Globe trotting is no longer a wonder, or even a fad — it 
is the recreation of the wisest; and every farthest cranny of 
the world is being explored by the men of the long legs. 

Surely — with legs carrying him so far, with fingers that 
are in touch with all the race, with a tongue that tastes the 
fruits of the antipodes and speaks its entreaty or com- 
mand to the uttermost parts of the earth, with a nose that 
smells to Mecca and every back alley of the world, with 
ears that hear all that is said from the world's end to the 
world's end, and with eyes that see everything in the earth 
and in the rocks and in the sea and in the heavens — man 
needs a well-stocked and well-trained brain if he is to prove 
himself the worthy master of such powers. A brain as 
great as the brain of our fathers is not sufficient. The 
brain of man must increase its grasp and power to direct 
as fast as the senses and the locomotive powers increase 
their reach. Unless it does so, man becomes as practically 
useless as the really brainless mathematical prodigy of 
whom we hear so often who can perform any number of 
such feats as telling you the number of seconds in your 
life the next instant after you have given him the date of 
your birth. Such abnormality is not intellect — it is as 
great a monstrosity as a calf's head above a human form 
would be. So, if we have the long ear or the long eye or 
the long tongue or the long fingers without the great brain 
to master them, we shall be mere prodigies, unless, indeed, 
we become worse; the long eye developing lust, the long 
ear scandal, the long tongue meddling, and the long 
fingers theft. 

The Brain an Inheritor. 

It must not be overlooked that we have jumped along 
with such mighty leaps in the discovery, invention, and ap- 
plication of these forces and contrivances that we have had 



162 The Eternal Building. 

little time to develop the brains to manage them. They 
have played havoc with all the blessed old "ologies" — 
Geology, Biology, Anthropology, and all the list relating 
to the beginnings and development of the world have had 
to eat each other to continue standing. Philosophy has 
run a race with the Higher Criticism for the place of Can- 
nibal-in-Chief at the festal board, and both are fat because 
they have eaten so much that was put forth to stand for- 
ever. Theology has not been unshaken, and the old truth 
comes forth in new clothes, from which a few of the old 
gores may be missing. The old books will no longer serve 
as teachers. I am looking in the eyes of a very youthful 
birthday, but I was taught much about a great American 
Desert. The theories concerning heat and light have been 
very materially changed since I was born, and there is 
many a point on which I would not dare trust my Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica, though it is the ninth edition. Thus 
brains have been having a hard time of it. Men have 
learned many things only to have the next edition of their 
text-book declare those things wrong and leave the learner 
in a fog. 

But, hard or not, man must build up his brain if he hopes 
to utilize these vast forces for his own and his neighbors' 
good. He must learn how to use the weapons of to-day. 
Perfection in the use of those of yesterday will be but 
mockery. Heroes won with them then because they were 
up to the times, but heroes would die with them to-day 
because they are behind the times. Were the Continental 
Army to come on the field to-morrow with their old flint- 
locks, a single regiment armed with our Krag-Jorgensen 
rifles would stretch that noble army dead before it could 
rub its fire. The military tactics of Alexander would have 
won no victories for Napoleon, nor was the generalship of 
the Napoleonic wars the pattern followed by Grant and 
Von Moltke in winning the victories that gave them their 



The Brain an Inheritor. 163 

fame. The transmission of orders by lightning would have 
alone revolutionized the conduct of war; but when we add 
to that the Gatling and Maxim machine-guns, magazine 
rifles, and Krupp cannon throwing shells and solid shot 
twelve miles, it is easy to recognize that even the Artillery- 
man of Toulon would have been compelled to take a few 
more lessons. The way the fathers conducted business 
will not give success to-day. If it took a steady hand to 
drive a stage coach, it will surely take one more steady 
and more intelligently directed to drive our mile-a-minute 
rail travelers; nor is it to be expected that the methods of 
business that were successful in stage-coach days will an- 
swer the demands of these days of flying trains and instan- 
taneous communication with the ends of the earth. When 
the mighty forces that are our pride were brought forth 
from their hiding places and harnessed to the car of thought 
and commerce new text-books became at once necessary 
to direct the enlarged activities of men. 

Never before in the history of the race was there such 
need for well-developed minds as to-day, and never before 
were the rewards open to such minds so alluring. When 
it has been proved that the mind of man can express itself 
instantaneously and so as to be completely intelligible to 
other minds thousands of miles distant; that it can me- 
chanically take an impression of spoken words and repro- 
duce them after any period of time ; that it can compute 
years in advance and accurately to a fraction of time the 
movements of suns and planets and comets millions of 
miles distant; that it can describe with absolute knowledge 
the composition of the stars, and through spectrum analy- 
sis tell the secrets of light that left its source ages before 
the dawn of our history; that it can take hold on the 
farthest reaches of the past and make them so vividly real 
that we behold worlds forming, time beginning, and man 
emerging from the Nowhere into the Here; that it dares 



164 The Eternal Building. 

to climb up on to the knee of Divinity and ask, Why am I 
here? and bring back an answer that is the consolation and 
arousing hope of increasing millions; when it is proved 
that such are the possibilities open before every babe born 
into the world, and that, save for the few born so, none 
need be fools but those who choose to be — surely every 
man with a bit of such mind within him should be stirred 
to stretch himself and seek to measure the height and 
depth and length and breadth of this vast endowment. 

There is vast encouragement for you in the fact that 
your being born within the bosom of civilization has given 
you a grand inheritance of mind. For you the world has 
not only been storing its treasures from the creation, but 
for you, also, man has been thinking, planning, and achiev- 
ing from the day of his entrance into the world. You are 
the inheritors of all the social and intellectual progress of 
the race. That you start in life with a brain better 
equipped than that of the cave dweller of the early times 
or the Hottentot of the present you owe to the race of 
which you are born and a hundred generations of mind- 
enlarging ancestors. The marvelous accomplishments of 
modern civilization are not the creations of our day or 
generation. They do not declare any superior intellectual 
power on our part. "They are not the colossal products 
of individual minds among us, but they are the results of 
small accumulations of knowledge slowly and painfully 
made and added to by many minds through an indefinite 
number of generations in the past, every addition to this 
store of knowledge affording still greater facilities for 
further additions." * "One must rise into the mood that 
beholds the great moral task of humanity and that sees 
that every true word and every pure and brave life, whether 
remembered or forgotten, is a permanent contribution to 
the final victorious accomplishment of that task. The 

* Kidd, Social Evolution. 




IMMANUEL KANT. 



" He had received 
From nature an intense and glowing mind." 

■ — Wordsworth. 

His was a mind in quest of truth. For truth he lived ; his 
mind he fed with a thousand of meals to one offered to his 
body. 



The Brain an Inheritor. 165 

supreme question is not whether one is known as having 
part in the great enterprise, but whether one has in very 
truth a living influence in it. It is a sacred inducement to 
this high mood to recall the familiar fact that our civiliza- 
tion is largely the product of the forgotten. The farms of 
England are a delight to the eye; they are laid out with 
so much symmetry; the fences of hedge and stone are so 
fine; the face of the earth wears a cultured look, and 
exactness and neatness reign everywhere. To whom are 
Englishmen to-day indebted for bringing the primeval 
forest into this condition? To more than fifty generations 
of forgotten toilers. It is largely the magnificent gift to 
the present of dead and unremembered men. The face of 
their country they changed ; they made it rich with fruit- 
fulness and bright with enduring beauty. Their names 
have perished, but their work remains. The same holds 
true of the methods of business. The epochs in the 
changes of business, like those consequent upon the use of 
steam and electricity, are remembered; but the multitude 
of minor important changes are associated with no names. 
The business youth of to-day is the inheritor of a system 
of untold value, perfected by hosts of sagacious men work- 
ing in concert, who have passed forever into oblivion. 
The ocean steamer of to-day is an evolution through 
gradual improvements from the canoe of the savage. The 
history gathered up in one of these masterpieces of naval 
architecture is singularly impressive. Every rib of steel, 
every bolt and spar, every rope in the rigging, every foot 
of construction from stem to stern, from keel to deck, and 
from deck to the pennant flying from the main royal mast, 
embodies the successive and accumulated inventions of 
uncounted generations of forgotten men of genius."* 

Nor is it to be assumed that even those more striking 
and startling discoveries and inventions that have made 

* Gordon, The Christ of To-Day. 



166 The Eternal Building. 

the fame of a few were the product of their own skill and 
brain alone; that they were immensely above the com- 
mon herd and widely separated from the average mind 
about them. Again and again it has been proved that 
these discoveries and inventions were rather the products 
of the time than of any one great mind. In the whole his- 
tory of human progress rival claims have always been put 
forward, and usually with good ground, for the honor of 
being the first explorer in all these branching avenues of 
progress. Galileo and Copernicus had each contestants 
for the honors the world has awarded to them. Rival 
claims have been made for the discovery of the conserva- 
tion of energy, the undulatory theory of light, the dif- 
ferential calculus, the method of spectrum analysis, the 
interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, the evolu- 
tion theory, and for the invention of the steam engine, 
the telegraph, the telephone, the transmission of sound 
without wires, and countless other wonders of our day. 
You will remember that, though widely separated, and 
working without any knowledge of the other, Adams and 
Leverrier arrived at the conclusions that led to the vision 
of Neptune almost simultaneously. It is almost a truism 
that no great idea is the product of a single mind. 

When we look at the progress of the mind in religious 
thought we find the same rule holds true. The revela- 
tions of the Eternal Mind, whose purpose ripens with the 
years, seem to flow in mighty thought currents through 
the intellects of men. These currents ebb and flow as the 
human mind apprehends or fails to apprehend the purpose 
of the Eternal. In these vast currents the individual is in 
a measure submerged, yet now and then some mighty 
wave will sweep to its crest some champion of its thought, 
through whose voice the surging current will articulate it- 
self, or by whose pen its new reve-lation will be made to 
the race. These thought currents are not produced by 



The Brain an Inheritor. 167 

man, but by God, and each current wears its channel 
through the thought of the age before the champion 
spreads his sails to be borne on by tide and wind. The 
sea of human thought was surging high; the foam-crested 
waves of independence in thought, in faith, and in duty 
tossed and tumbled. Like those phosphorescent masses 
that occasionally gleam on tropic seas, Wyclif, Savonarola, 
and Huss shone from some mountainous waves ; but by 
and by the waves massed themselves, and Luther, up- 
borne by them, sent forth, with all the rolling thunder of 
the mighty deep, the voice of that surging current, and 
the shores of all the world felt the wash of the tremendous 
waves. So with Wesley. Surely, though with but a mur- 
muring ripple, the current was rising that would sweep 
away the debris of the ages, tear formalism from its 
wharves, wash hate and infant damnation from the De- 
crees, and bear the reconstructed ship " Personal Witness " 
to every port of a needy world. Taylor and Law had al- 
ready crowned the waves' tops; Wesley came not to force, 
but to be forced by that great current of divine thought 
which was descending like a cataract from the opened 
wind doors of God's storehouse of grace, and, like the 
Gulf Stream, quickening and kindling with revival fervor 
every theological creed washed by its warm waves. So in 
our age, with all the potential energy and measureless in- 
fluence of that same Gulf Stream, there is surging through 
the intellect of the age a mighty current of divine thought 
which demands the immediate practical application of the 
teachings of Jesus Christ to the problems of the age. A cur- 
rent which would tear away selfishness from every Christian 
and force him with the compulsion of love to live as Christ 
lived nineteen centuries ago, and as the Holy Spirit will 
give power to live to-day. I think I know some of the men 
who are being used to express the wave-roaring of this 
mighty current; it is for the historian to write their names. 



168 The Eternal Building. 

You see, then, that you are not alone. You are a part 
of a great whole. You are sharing with millions the 
secrets of the ages, and you may add not much, but yet 
add something, to the general store. To enjoy and to 
share you have a mind. The inconvenience of those who 
have labored before you you will never know. The secrets 
that they have divined and applied that you may have 
daily comfort and increased advantage you accept as a 
matter of course. It would be well for you to grow a little 
gratitude and prove it by sturdy labor to increase the in- 
heritance of the next generation. My little girl ran to me 
a few months ago, exclaiming, "O, papa, I seen horses 
drawing a great, big car! " Electric cars were the ordi- 
nary to her — horse cars the wonder. And it is so with 
many of us regarding many things. 

The Mind and the Truth. 

What is mind ? Mind is the interrogator of the uni- 
verse. It is that within us that asks, Who, what, whence, 
am I ? that asks of itself, What is mind ? and if some one 
answers, " Gray matter," pins it with the query, What is 
matter ? Mind is that within the man which thinks, rea- 
sons, wills, remembers, questions. It is that in man which 
differentiates him from the brutes; that indicates that he 
is beyond measure superior to the strongest, noblest, king- 
liest beast that treads any earthly field; infinitely more 
sublime than the loftiest soaring eagle or sweetest-toned 
songster. Mind is that possession of man that appears to 
give him an inherent right to fly to every sun in the uni- 
verse and ask it, How came you here ? Aye, that gives 
him the right, reverently yet majestically, to look into the 
face of the Creator of all things, and in just such tones as 
command an answer, ask : Who art thou ? What is my 
relation to thee ? 

What is the mind for ? First and always to put and 



The Mind and the Truth. 169 

keep man in right relations with God and all about him. 
It is the hook by which man grapples the truth, both of 
his own being and of the Eternal Being, and its quest for 
truth is unending. But this only leads us to Pilate's ques- 
tion, though with a different sense to our query, What is 
truth ? This is the nut that has unhinged many a philo- 
sophic nut-crack. This much, however, will not be gain- 
said. Truth and reality represent the same thing; the 
terms serving a wise purpose in assisting us in our quest. 
Truth is reality in the mind. Reality is truth out of the 
mind. Reality is objective truth; truth is subjective real- 
ity. I behold a house or a sun; the house and sun are re- 
ality. I apprehend that it is a house or a sun, and I possess 
that much truth. Reality is the fact, truth the knowledge 
of the fact. Better, truth is the conformity of our knowl- 
edge to the things known. Truth is reality under the 
cover of our mind, and it is no easy task always for us to 
get reality under this cover. Remember truth is not the 
thing; it is our apprehension of the thing. Our failure to 
apprehend a thing does not make it any the less real. The 
sun and Niagara would be realities if there were not a mind 
in the world to apprehend their existence. 

But all reality is in relation to mind. Objectively in re- 
lation to the divine mind, subjectively to the human mind. 
Mind cannot get out of reality what mind has not put into 
reality. Reality is thus a speechmaker for the Eternal, de- 
claring what he has put into it. Our minds do not always 
hear or interpret the speech aright, and so we have error 
and not truth. The world is an expression of mind. The 
original elements of which it is composed were brought into 
harmonious relations with each other so that they make up 
rocks, water, soil, air, trees, animals, man, by the direc- 
tion of mind. The amount of matter that composes the 
earth is fixed and definite. It can be expressed in pounds. 
From the beginning not a pound has been added or taken 



170 The Eternal Building. 

away. You must account for its presence. It either de- 
termined its own existence, determining its own weight and 
method of composition, or it was determined by some 
power or cause outside of itself. If it determined itself to 
be, is the product of its own commands, then it is intelli- 
gent, for self-determination and self-action are the essential 
characteristics of mind. To account for the world thus 
demands a far greater draft on reason than to believe it to 
be the expression of the thought and power of an Infinite 
Mind; but in either case I have you. The world is an ex- 
pression of mind. It is the object that may be appre- 
hended by the mind and by its activity be converted into 
a subjective world. "The difference between the objec- 
tive and the subjective globe will be that one will be 
thought and the other will be thing. But the same internal 
relations found in the objective globe will be preserved in 
the subjective, and the transcript of the globe that is held 
in thought will be truth in exact proportion as it corre- 
sponds to the material globe that rolls out of the mind. 
That an objective globe, which is a thing, may become a 
subjective globe, which is a thought and not a thing, im- 
plies that there is something in common between thoughts 
and things — that is, the mind, by its constitution, is capa- 
ble of apprehending and taking into itself the constitution 
and relation of things. This is its capacity for truth, and 
shows that truth is not foreign to it, but one with itself! " * 

If the world were not an expression of mind, man's mind 
would not be able to find truth in it. You can read some- 
thing out of this book only because something was put into 
it. After long study students have deciphered the mean- 
ing of the Assyrian and Egyptian hieroglyphics, but all their 
study would not have got thought out of them if thought 
had not been put into them. 

All reality, however, is not of things. There is a sense in 

* Lee, The Making of a Man. 



The Mind and the Truth. 171 

which reality applies to laws, relations, or events. These 
may be real, though never in the same sense that a thing 
is real. "Thus it appears that there may be different 
kinds of reality. There may be a reality of the feelings, 
thoughts, relations, and events as well as of things. It is 
important to keep this distinction in mind, and to remem- 
ber the kind of reality which is possible to a given object 
of thought. The reality of feeling is in being felt; that of 
thought, in being thought; that of an event, in its oncom- 
ings; that of law, in its rulings." * 

There is a realm of truth — that is, of reality. The human 
mind is not the creator of truth; it is but its discoverer. 
By the right use of this crowning endowment, his intel- 
lectual faculties, man may find out, in some measure at 
least, what is and what is not reality, what may and what 
may not be predicated of it. With his mind man may 
grasp the truth as his eye grasps the light, his ear sound. 
For his mind the truth exists as truly as the sun for his 
eyes. To determine what is truth has been the effort 
of the ages, remains the struggle of to-day, and will, no 
doubt, continue to engage the intellectual might of man for 
all time, if not for all eternity. That the mind craves for 
truth, that it longs for knowledge as the appetite longs for 
food, that the truth is its polestar, is proved by nothing 
more clearly than the intense joy and exquisite gratifica- 
tion which it experiences when it has arrived at some fair 
understanding of a problem to which it has applied itself. 

"The pursuit of truth, in the effort to acquire knowl- 
edge of all reality to the extent to which such knowledge 
is attainable, has been regarded by the wise and good of 
all ages as the noblest employment of the faculties of man. 
Thus it is that he, at the same time, attains his own high- 
est personal perfection of power and character, and most 
completely subjugates all environments in nature and all 

*Bowne, Studies in Theism. 



172 The Eternal Building. 

possibilities of every kind to his present use and permanent 
advancement; thus, also, he most honors and best quali- 
fies himself to serve the great Being whose image he alone, 
of all terrestrial creatures, is permitted to bear. To this 
end his faculties were bestowed. By this means only can 
the true ends of his existence be realized. To him per- 
manent error is deformity and avoidable ignorance is sin. 
The capacity to acquire knowledge, and the importance 
of its attainment to personal worthiness and enlarged use- 
fulness and happiness, make its pursuit not only the 
noblest occupation, but the highest privilege and most 
absolute and immutable duty. Among all the other duties 
arising from our complex and multiform relations, whether 
to our Creator or our fellows, there is not one of which 
this is not a complement. It heightens and gives dignity, 
significance, and completeness to all the rest. Knowledge 
imparts worthiness to love, dignity to integrity, grace to 
honor, beauty to meekness, comeliness to faith, and sheen 
and glory to all the virtues; it honors worship, adorns 
faith, and enriches the everyday conduct of life with the 
beauty of wisdom and consistency; it gives weight and 
force to the influence of example and character. He who 
enlarges the sphere of knowledge by a better apprehension 
of truth and clearer statement of it, or corrects error, or 
removes doubt or uncertainty by making more plain what 
was obscure, or in any way, on any subject, and especially 
the important problems of life, contributes to the cure of 
ignorance and establishment of truth, helps forward the 
race, and is a true benefactor of mankind. The good he 
does adds to the real wealth of the world and is immortal. 
Progress toward the ideal is simply progress in the knowl- 
edge and practical application of the truth. Truth is the 
great evangel ; the struggle of the ages has been to acquire 
it. Our Lord assumed to himself no higher title than that 
he was the Truth. It is the mighty lever by which the 



The Quest of Truth. 173 

world is to be lifted into its millennium of peace and 
blessedness. No difference what goes if truth comes. 
Blessed are they who unveil the mysteries of nature and 
put the race in possession of her hidden wonders, every 
opened secret of which is a revelation of the Infinite Author 
and a ministry of beneficence to her children! Blessed 
are they who guide to the discovery of those ineffable laws 
which underlie and pervade the universal system, putting 
us in possession of the philosophy of all material and men- 
tal movement! Thrice blessed those who unfold the 
deeper moral significance of our human life, and aid to 
clearer apprehension of the divine thought and purpose 
concerning our own spiritual duty and destiny; who purge 
religion of superstition, and the holy doctrines of revelation 
of the imperfect meanings which incompetence and human 
rashness have woven about them, and lift into clearer light 
those majestic truths which alone can ultimately bring us 
to our highest destiny! Blessed are all the workers in all 
fields who hasten the millennium of the hallowed reign of 
Him who is the Truth! " * 

The Quest of Truth. 

' 'In the quest for truth how shall I proceed?" Would 
that I could tell you. Then would there be none too great 
to do me reverence. The race of truth seekers is divided 
into two great companies, each of which, of course, believes 
it is traveling along the best road. Whichever company 
you travel with you must expect to have sore feet before 
your quest is rewarded. You will never become wise by 
accident. Some get rich that way, but wise never. The 
truth costs both to gain and to maintain. 

One of those companies will accept nothing that is not 
either self-evident or demonstrated. They will admit 
nothing that can be doubted. Descartes is their captain. 

* Bishop Foster, Prolegomena. 



174 The Eternal Building. 

He, the heir of all the intellectual accumulations of the 
ages, determined to summon all belief to the bar of his 
reason and force it to show cause for its existence. If his 
mind could bring a doubt against any belief, it was to be 
cast out. He began with the idea of God. Of course he 
could doubt it, and lo! there was no God. Next came 
the world; it, too, was doubted, ejected from belief, and 
world there was none. Man was next brought to the bar, 
doubted, and condemned. So it fared with mind and all 
the beliefs it had treasured. What was left ? Little, you 
would think, on which to build up a huge system of philos- 
ophy. Descartes was now without God, the world, man, 
mind, and in a measure without himself. All were gone; 
all that remained of his former treasury of facts was the 
fact that he doubted. He could not doubt without thinking. 
To doubt was to think, and to think required a thinker. 
Who was he? The most reasonable answer was that the 
thinker was his own personal being himself. So he gained 
his next fact. "I think; therefore lam." But he was 
not always; he had a beginning. He was compelled to 
think of a Being who had caused him. He continued 
farther; the Being that caused him must himself be un- 
caused. Aye, that Being must be perfect. "How could 
I doubt or desire, how could I be conscious of anything as 
I want, how could I know that I am not altogether perfect, 
if I had not in me the idea of a Being more perfect than 
myself, by comparison with whom I recognize the defects 
of my own existence?"* Still more, there could be no 
uncaused first cause without an effect; creation, then, was 
the effect of the first great cause. Thus Descartes hewed 
for himself a way from doubt to faith, and was able 
rationally to believe in the existence of himself, the world, 
and God as the cause of all. And his philosophy was a 
gospel of cheer to many. 

* Meditatio tertia. 



The Quest of Truth. 175 

The other company proceed on a pleasanter and we be- 
lieve more speedy train. Instead of doubting everything 
that can be doubted, they doubt nothing until they are 
compelled to doubt. They grant that everything is what 
it reports itself until some reason for doubting the ac- 
curacy of the report appears. As in society we get on 
better by assuming that men are truthful than we should 
if we assumed that every man was a liar until he had 
proved the contrary, so in the quest for truth it is be- 
lieved that more progress will be made if we assume the 
truthfulness of the universe and of our own nature than 
we should if we doubted both. 

Following this latter method, let me attempt to give you 
just a little start in the use of your mind in the quest of 
truth. The first object which attracts the thought of men 
is the visible universe. It is not only a marvel of animate 
and inanimate form, but a thing of surpassing beauty and 
reveals an adaptation to useful ends that compels the high- 
est admiration. Century upon century of minute observa- 
tion has only enhanced the wonder of it all. How came 
this world to be ? The complexity and constant change 
of the universe, as well as its harmony and order, will not 
let our reason be satisfied with the idea that it is self- 
existent. Its every movement seems to declare that it is 
derived. But from what ? We consider how we as men 
produce our best work, and we find that in every case that 
the thing produced existed first as a thought in our mind 
before it took shape outside of our mind in an objective 
reality. In many cases, of course, that thought was grad- 
ually developed, as the successive sketches preparatory to 
the production of a great painting, before the thought 
was objectively realized. The great Ferris Wheel rose com- 
plete and revolved in the mind of its inventor before a 
single bar of the steel of which it was composed was 

forged or a bolt riveted. Had it not worked in the mind 

12 



176 The Eternal Building. 

of a man it would never have worked on the Midway. So 
it is of all great works of men ; they are the result of pa- 
tient thought and untiring labor, and our admiration of 
the thing produced always carries with it admiration for 
the mind that produced it, for we realize that the producer 
is greater than the product. 

Now, with this idea grasped, we turn to the universe and 
ask if it is an exception to this generalization ? Is this 
universe, that for complexity yet symmetry never fails to 
surprise us, the product of intelligence, the realization of 
a subjective thought, or is it but the result of the opera- 
tion of blind chance and unconscious and unmastered 
forces ? Does the universe reveal an artificer as much 
greater than itself as man is greater than his grandest prod- 
uct, or is it senseless and chaotic ? To this question the 
reason of man will permit but one reply. The universe 
bears witness to the existence of an infinite Architect, and 
all nature reveals the splendor of his thought. The heavens 
declare the existence of an infinite Mind, and the firma- 
ment maketh known the majesty of his operations. 

Were a few millions of independent and self-subsisting 
atoms, each acting without any attraction or concert with 
the other, to arrange themselves in fonts of printer's type, 
and then, unguided by any intelligent power and without 
plan, stirred, say, by the wind, to arrange themselves in 
such forms as to become Butler's Analogy, Dante's Inferno, 
Milton's Paradise Lost, or Shakespeare's "Hamlet, "and then 
a few more millions of such atoms prepare paper, ink, press, 
and binding, and send them forth to the world, it would 
be less marvelous than that the sixty odd original elements 
out of which all things in nature are formed should come 
together in such quantity and quality as to form either one 
world or the universe. To believe that these atoms could 
take form in matchless prose or immortal verse without 
the direction of mind is less irrational than to suppose that 



The Quest of Truth. 177 

these sixty odd elements took form in mountains, seas, 
worlds, and suns, perfectly adjusted one to the other, 
without the direction of a determining, coordinating Mind. 

The universe being the expression of the thought and 
power and skill of an infinite Mind, who is its Creator 
and Ruler, there is opened up to the seeker of truth the 
whole range of questions beginning with such queries as: 
What is the nature of God ? What are his methods of 
world-forming and world government ? What is the pur- 
pose of the universe ? How are its forces conserved ? And 
having found ourselves as a part of this universe, we head 
another list : What is man ? What is his relation to the 
world, the universe, to the Creator ? 

To all these questions there is an answer. That answer 
is the truth, and to gain that truth, or so much of it as shall 
fit him to perform to best advantage his part in the work- 
ing of the universe, man has been endowed with mind. 
Truth is the complement of mind, as light is the comple- 
ment of the eye and sound the complement of the ear. To 
gain this truth man should put forth all the energies of his 
mind. He will not find it all, but he will find enough to 
lead him out of the fog into the light. He will be able to 
read many of the secrets of the universe and will rise to 
the high altitude where he may think after him the very 
thoughts of the Eternal. Here are two rules which I think 
will aid every seeker in his quest: "Whatever the mind 
demands for the satisfaction of its subjective interests and 
tendencies may be assumed to be real in default of posi- 
tive disproof. . . . To adjust ourselves to the universe, 
and the universe to ourselves, so that each shall correspond 
to the other, is the implicit aim of mental development ; 
and the law which the mind implicitly follows is this: 
Whatever our total nature calls for may be assumed as 
real in default of positive disproof."* 

* Bowne, Philosophy of Theism. 



178 The Eternal Building. 

Dr. Beet has pointed out very aptly one of the divinely 
provided rewards that follow this quest for truth: " While 
we contemplate the beauty of the universe and study the 
wonderful adaptation of its parts, their exhaustless variety, 
and their profound unity, the eye which contemplates 
gains immensely in clearness and penetration and width of 
view. The visible world is a great lesson book spread out 
before us. And the lessons it teaches develop the intelli- 
gence that learns them, and thus gives to human life ever- 
increasing pleasure and worth. So wonderful and im- 
portant is this development that it cannot be accidental. 
The value of the lesson reveals the presence of a Teacher 
infinitely wise. Man's own thoughts about nature 
suggest irresistibly that nature itself is a realization of 
still higher thought. In other words, the effect of na- 
ture on man's intelligence proves that the Author of 
nature is himself intelligent."* 

Why Start with God ? 
We will not at this stage of our study consider the quest 
of mind for moral truth. I have put before you the thought 
of God — the Intelligent First Cause of the Universe — as a 
starting point in your intellectual development through the 
quest of truth, because such a starting point is necessary 
if you are to arrive at any satisfactory or adequate con- 
clusions. You must start right if you are to end right. 
Fog will only strain your eyes. It will never give you a 
clear vision. You must have a right conception of the 
cause of things or you will not be able to form a right con- 
ception of the issue of things. All the wonders of the uni- 
verse are open to the reading of your mind, but it will not 
be intelligible to you unless you read it with the convic- 
tion that it is the revelation of an Intelligent Creator. 
With your mind you may delve in the lowest strata of the 

* Through Christ to God. 



Why Start with God ? 179 

rocks and bid them tell you how they were formed and 
explain to you the composition of their myriad gems; you 
may put all the life in the world under your microscope 
and trace the biological march of every species; you may 
find man climbing down from the tree, and trace him all 
the way into the palace that he rears; you may study the 
ills of man and the medicinal properties of herbs, minerals, 
and air, and ask the why of their correspondence; you may 
weigh the words that issue from the lips of men of every 
tribe on this terrestrial ball, and seek to explain the rise of 
language; you may study the history of all nations and 
try to fathom the philosophy of human progress; you may 
change your idea of heat and usher in the age of the 
steam engine, with its speedy methods of transportation 
by railroad and steamship; you may harness the unex- 
plainable and corner the market by telegraph, order your 
dinner by telephone, change the policy of nations by 
cablegram, and make the night as bright as day; you may 
number and name the stars, and analyze the stuff of which 
they are formed, but you will reach no rational conclu- 
sions and gain no satisfying answers to the million and one 
questions which these studies will arouse unless you begin 
and continue your search with a clear conception of an 
Immanent and Intelligent First Cause illuminating your 
mind. Atheism is darkness; it is blindness, for it destroys 
its own eyes. It may talk of "reason," and " prog- 
ress, " and "science, " and have a whole list of fine phrases — 
for so completely immersed is it in its own folly and ditched 
by its own lack of sight that it seems all unconscious that 
adhesion to its own tenets makes all these impossible. 

The truth is in the world for you to win, but to find it 
you must find God. Be careful, young inquirer, if you 
seek the truth, to get on the right train. Be not puffed up. 
Wisdom is humble. Knowledge increases a man's vision — 
never the size of his head. Chancellor Day tells of a 



180 The Eternal Building. 

freshman who was noticed parading the campus with his 
arms outstretched from his body, palms upward, and fin- 
gers working as in the act of scratching. Asked by one 
attracted by his antics what he was doing, the greater- 
than-ever-before replied, " Scratching my head." Said the 
chancellor, shaking his closed hand— which, be it said for 
the benefit of the freshman, is a very good-sized one— " In 
three months you could have put it all in there. " Aye, 
young man, when you have studied for fifty years you will 
begin to realize what a fool you are and continue to be. 

You are called to face many and mighty problems in 
every avenue of life's activity. It will take rare intellec- 
tual acumen to settle these questions right. It will take 
rare intellectual serenity to face them with the candor that 
will command a just solution. You will need the assist- 
ance of divine intelligence if you achieve success. You 
cannot get along without God. 

As an additional spur to prompt you to find God and 
start right in your pursuit of truth, if you would face life 
from the right view-point, let me put before you a few ex- 
tracts from the terrible description of atheism painted by 
Theodore Parker, who is certainly not to be charged with 
any lack of sympathy for all liberal views. The whole 
picture is worth your study, but space will permit but a 
few limnings to be reproduced, and these I will take from 
the study of everyday life : 

"I am a brave man, and my country needs me to repel 
the Spanish armada, or to keep imperial Nicholas or Fran- 
cis, or papal Pius the Ninth, or the little-hearted President 
Napoleon from kidnapping my liberty. I go out to do 
battle, and I come home scarred all over with heroism — 
half my limbs hewed off, aching at every pore. Or I die 
on the spot — I carry no heroism, no manhood with me; I 
am a heap of dust which other dust will soon cover; but 
the manhood which once enchanted this dust with valiant 



Why Start with God ? 181 

life is put out and quenched forever; it is all gone — it is 
nothing. My brother in that time of peril was a coward, 
and when war blew the trumpet and his country called on 
him he crept under the oven. When all was over and 
quiet is restored he comes out with a whole skin, and 
over my unburied bones he marches into peace and 
carousing, and says, ' A pretty fool was this man to lay 
down his life for me and get nothing for it ! ' And the 
atheist says, 'He is right.' . . . 

"I lay in the ground one, the dearest to me; some only 
daughter — her life but a bud, not a blossom; yet, mere bud 
as it is, the better part of my life. In the agony of my 
heart I flee to my atheist for comfort; and he cannot give 
me a drop of water from the tip of his finger, while I am 
tormented in that unutterable grief. 'A worm,' says he, 
1 has eaten up your rosebud. Get what comfort you can. 
This is the last spring day; no leaf will be green again for 
you.' . . . 

"Look on the aspect of human misery, the outrage, 
blood, and wrong which the earth groans under. Here is 
the wife of a drunkard, whose marriage life is a perpetual 
violation. She married for love a man who once loved her; 
but the mayor and the aldermen of the city insisted that he 
should be made a beast. A beast, did I say ? Ye four- 
footed and creeping things of the earth, I beg your pardon ! 
Even the swine is sober in his sty. The mayor and 
aldermen of the city made this man a drunkard; and the 
poor wife watches over him, cleanses his garments, wipes 
off the foulness of his debauch, and stitches her life into 
the garments which some wealthy tailor will sell — giving 
her for wages the tenth part of his own profit — and which 
some dandy will wear — thanking the ' gods of dandies ' that 
he is not like that poor woman, so ill-clad and industrious. 
She will stitch her life into the garments, working at star- 
vation wages, and yet will pay the fines to keep the street 



182 The Eternal Building. 

drunkard out of the house of correction, where the city 
government hides the bodies of the men it slays. She toils 
tiil at length the silver cord of life has got loosed, and the 
golden bowl begins to break. She goes to my atheist and 
asks : ' What comes of all this ? Am I to have any compen- 
sation for my suffering ? ' And the atheist says: ' Nothing 
comes of it; there is no compensation. You are a fool. 
You might better have got a license from the mayor and the 
aldermen to prey on other men's wives about you; then you 
might have had wealth and ease and respectability. You 
ought to drink blood and not shed your own.' . . . 

" The iron grip of kings chokes the throat of the people. 
Every empire is girded at the loins with an iron belt of 
soldiers, which eats into the nation's flesh. Siberia fattens 
with freedom's noble dead, and in America three millions 
of men drag out a life in chains, bought as cattle, sold as 
cattle, counted as cattle, only not prayed for in the Chris- 
tian churches as cattle are; and the little commissioner 
who kidnaps at Boston, and the great stealers of men who 
enact the statutes which make American women into mar- 
ketable things, are honored in all the * Christian ' churches 
of the land. . . . Cry out, blood of Abel ! there is no ear to 
hear you. Victims of nobleness, rot in your blood ! it will 
enrich the ground. Ye saints — Catherine, Andrew, Sebas- 
tian, Lawrence, Paul, Jesus — bear your rack and gibbet as 
best your bodies may! Kossuth, stoop to Francis the 
Stupid ! Ye patriots of France, kneel to Napoleon the 
Little, and be jolly in the Sodom which he makes. Ye 
that groan in the dungeons of the world, who starve in its 
fertile soils, who wear chains in free America — yield to the 
Jeffries, the Haynaus, the slave hunters, and the priests! 
for there is a body without a soul, an earth without a 
heaven, a world without a God. Atheism is the theory of 
the universe; and there is no God, no cause, no mind, no 
Providence. 



Why Start with God? 183 



ti 



I am not a sad man. Spite of the experience of life, 
somewhat bitter, I am cheerful, and a joyous and happy 
man. But take away my consciousness of God; let me be- 
lieve there is no infinite God; no infinite mind which 
thought the world into existence, and thinks it into con- 
tinuance; no infinite conscience which everlastingly enacts 
the eternal laws of the universe ; no infinite affection which 
loves the world; loves Abel and Cain; loves the drunkard's 
wife and the drunkard; the mayors and the aldermen who 
made the drunkard ; which loves the victim of the tyrant 
and loves the tyrant; loves the slave and his master; loves 
the murdered and the murderer; the fugitive and the kid- 
napper publicly gripping his price of blood — the third part 
of Iscariot's pay — and then secretly taking his anonymous 
revenge, stealthily calumniating some friend of humanity; 
convince me that there is no God who watches over the 
nation, but 'forsaken Israel wanders alone;' that the sad 
people of Europe, Africa, America, have no guardian — then 
I should be sadder than Egyptian night! My life would 
be only a shadow of a dimple on the bottom of a little 
brook — whirling and passing away; all the joy I have in 
the daily business of the world, in literature and science 
and art, in the friendships and wide philanthropies of the 
time, would perish at once — borne down in the rush of 
waters and lost in their headlong noise. Yes, I should die 
in uncontrollable anguish and despair." * 

"'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' 
He repeats it until he makes himself believe it. Putting 
out his eyes, he ceases to be able to see. That which to 
all others is open as day, to him is closed as by the dark- 
est night. Meantime all that have being publish their 
Maker. There is not an atom that is not vocal with his 
praise — the minutest grain equally with the mightiest orb, 
the microscopic cell no less than the most elaborate organ- 

* Sermons on Theism. 



184 The Eternal Building. 

ism. Creation, from base to finial, from center to circum- 
ference, throughout all its realms, joins in the ceaseless 
paean, swelling in cadences which fill immensity and will 
break forever along the shores of eternity, declarative of 
his power and glory. And if these dumb things testify to 
him, what shall be said of the angelic hosts who forever 
stand before him and behold the splendor of his effulgence 
and commune with the unfolding wonders of his thought 
and love? Well may they sing, * Great and marvelous are 
thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, 
thou King of saints.' " * 

"Of all these ideals that rule our life theism is the sum 
and source. The cognitive ideal of the universe, as a 
manifestation of the Supreme Reason, leads to theism. 
The moral ideal of the universe, as the manifestation of 
the Supreme Righteousness, leads to theism. The prac- 
tical ideal of a ' far-off divine event to which the whole 
creation moves ' leads to theism. In short, while theism 
is demonstrated by nothing, it is implicit in everything. 
It cannot be proved without begging the question, or de- 
nied without ending in absurdity, "f Start, then, all ye 
who would search for truth with the first words of the creed 
graven deep within thy mind : "I believe in God the Father 
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." 

Will Power. 

Let us now consider some of the ways and means for 
the nurture and development of the intellectual faculties 
with which we are endowed, and first of all we may well 
place will power. 

"There are three kinds of people in the world," says 
some one, " the wills, the won'ts, and the can'ts. The first 
accomplish everything; the second oppose everything; the 
third fail in everything. " 

* Bishop Foster, Theism. + Bowne, Philosophy of Theism. 



Will Power. 185 

The world will always have room for the man who ac- 
complishes things. After the battle at Shiloh, in which so 
many Northern men were killed, and in a war that was to 
be "just a picnic," that the whole North got frightened 
and called for the dismissal of Grant, Lincoln listened one 
night until one o'clock to Congressmen and Senators and 
officers who pleaded for his removal, and then answered: 
"I can't spare this man. He fights!" Victory may not 
always be in sight, but stick to your guns. " Don't give 
up the ship " because the enemies press or a squall blows. 
Grant himself said of Shiloh, "I thought I was going to 
fail, but I kept right on." That's it. Keeping at it wins 
the day. Shiloh became a victory because Grant, like 
Napoleon at Marengo, refused to stay defeated. 

The crest of an ancient house is a pickaxe with the 
motto, "I will find a way or make one." That is the 
sign-manual of success, the motto of conquerors. Pick 
your way to glory. You must go to the Klondike; it will 
not come to you. You must have a will that dares to look 
death in the face and not flinch; that presses on into the 
very heart of the ice; that has the grit to lift out of the 
way the frozen skeletons of those who impede the trail, and 
with firmer clinched lips trudge on; that falters not, though 
a thousand freeze on the right hand and the left; 
that keeps eyes to the front when the last scrap has been 
swallowed, and either success or starvation must be reached 
before sundown. The dauntless will is the master of cir- 
cumstances and the architect of fate. All things are com- 
pelled to yield before it. It may not win all the triumphs 
which it decrees for itself, but it will lift its possessor im- 
mensely higher than the common, will-less, vacillating herd. 
It may not fully dominate the world; it may not continue 
forever to play with Europe as a toy; it may find its Water- 
loo, but no Corsica will be able to contain it, and no 
France feel alone its prowess. The man who wills to rise 



186 The Eternal Building. 

will find a way to stand, like the son of Kish, head and 
shoulders above the mob. 

"The longer I live," said Sir Thomas Buxton, "the 
more I am certain that the great difference between men, 
between the great and the insignificant, is energy, invinci- 
ble determination, an honest purpose once fixed, and then 
death or victory. This will do anything in the world, and 
no talents, no circumstances, will make a two-legged 
creature a man without it." The road to success is 
strewn thick with the wrecks of men of great brain, 
large heart, brilliant talent, fine physique, gentlemanly 
manners, "hail fellows well met," who have continually 
lagged behind for want of a sturdy will, an unshakable 
purpose, an undauntable courage. It is not the 
brains a man has, but the use he makes of them that 
counts in the long run. Many men of marvelous mental 
acquirements have shriveled themselves away in their in- 
tellectual miserliness. Dying in oblivion because they had 
not sufficient will power to exert themselves to share with 
the race their treasures. Lack of will accounts, also, for 
the disappointment caused by many whose early promise 
gave the world the right to expect much from them. They 
rested on their laurels or became the slaves of their lower 
nature and robbed themselves and the world of their best 
labor. The deplorable ending to the lives of many men of 
genius is all traceable to their lack of will power. Burns 
declared that if a keg of rum were placed in one corner of 
the room and a loaded cannon made ready to fire upon him if 
he approached it, he must go for the rum. It was just this 
slavery resulting from a lack of will that sullied the fame 
of Alexander, Sheridan, Lamb, Byron, Poe, and a host of 
others. 

Mediocrity often makes a name for itself by the resolute- 
ness of its will and persistency of its endeavor. Difficulties 
before which cleverness quails, talent trembles, and genius 




OTTO VON BISMARCK. 

There was iron in his blood. Against him France dashed 
only to be broken. 

" He was a man who knew exactly what he wanted and 
directed his course straight ahead." — Henry M. Stanley. 



Will Power. 187 

falters vanish when the man of the iron will strides toward 
them. Yankees have won their way so surprisingly in the 
world not because they know so much more than other 
folks, but because they never let on that they know that 
they are beat. "We're beat! We're beat! " yelled a soldier 
at Antietim, as part of a charging column came reeling 
back. " Shut your mouth, you baby! " cried his comrade; 
"never say we're beat, till you're beat yourself." Some 
one has said that if you should drop a Yankee on a desolate 
island in the Pacific and leave him his knife, he would get 
home as soon or sooner than the ship that left him there. 
"Put him in anywhere, and he will get out if he wants to; 
put him out anywhere, and he will get in if he wants to. " 
Emerson declared that he had "a half belief that the 
person is possible who can counterpoise all other persons. 
We believe that there may be a man who is a match for 
events — one who never found his match; against whom 
other men being dashed are broken; one who can give you 
any odds and beat you." Bulwer put it: "There is so 
much power in faith, even when faith is applied to things 
human and earthly, that let a man be but firmly persuaded 
that he is born to do some day what at the moment seems 
impossible, and it is fifty to one but what he does it be- 
fore he dies. " ' { When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, " 
said John Foster, "it is curious to see how the space 
clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom." 

A resolute purpose knitteth the knees, and the firm tread nourish de- 
cision. — Tupper. 

The man of the iron will is the master of his body. It 
is startling to note the vast control the will has over this 
mass of flesh and blood we call our body. Of course it is 
possible to carry the demands of the will upon the body too 
far. A piece of steel will bear only a given amount of strain ; 
beyond that limit it will snap. So with our body. It can 



188 The Eternal Building. 

and often does endure a terrible and prolonged strain, but 
at length the limit is reached, and the silver cord breaks. 
But for everyone who by the command of his will pushes 
his body too far a score crawl through life or lie down 
and gasp away their days in misery, when the exercise of 
the power of their will would have wrought for them com- 
fort, if not health itself. 

"What, die! and leave a family of little children?" 
cried Douglass Jerrold, when his physician told him to 
prepare for death. "/ won't die!" And he didn't for 
many a year. Aaron Burr threw aside a wasting fever 
with the bedclothes when the call came to him to join 
the expedition against Quebec. Wolfe, all his life a sick 
man and now stretched on his cot with a fever, wrote 
home five days before the storming of Quebec, " My con- 
stitution is entirely ruined, and that without prospect of 
rendering any service to the state." But in five days he 
jumped from that cot to carve his name on the scroll 
of fame. Torstenson, the great general of the Thirty 
Years' War, was usually carried about in a litter, so great 
was his bodily suffering from gout, yet the rapidity of his 
movements rivaled those of Napoleon and mightily discom- 
fited his enemies. Muley Moluc, the Moor, was looking 
into the eyes of death from an incurable disease when his 
army was nearly destroyed by the Portuguese. Jumping 
from his litter to a horse at the very crisis of the battle, 
the man with the death rattle in his throat and the death 
sweat upon his face rallied his army and routed his foes 
and died with the victors' praise in his ears. The captured 
Texans of the Santa Fe Expedition were nearly dead from 
the fatigue and exhaustion of hard fighting and long 
marches, yet when they were told that any who proved 
unable to walk would be shot, every man of them con- 
trived to keep moving all the day. "The thought of my 
father, who could not have sustained such a blow as my 



Will Power. 189 

death, restrained me, and I commanded myself to live," 
said Seneca, explaining his recovery from a sickness that 
for weeks had seemed to be the messenger of death. For 
forty years Darwin never knew a day of health, yet all 
through those years he persisted in his studies, and after 
twenty years of toil sent forth his Origin of Species, and 
after thirty years his Descent of Man. "Ifs dogged that 
does it! " was his favorite motto. He would almost apolo- 
gize for his patience, saying that he could not bear to be 
beaten. George Wilson, of Edinburgh, for twenty years 
seemed to be playing hide and seek with death. He 
was born so frail that had the old laws of the Greeks been 
obeyed, he would have been quietly strangled as not giving 
promise of enough life to preserve. Death seemed to 
gather him to itself piecemeal. Pint by pint it took his 
blood by terrible hemorrhages; ounce by ounce it took his 
flesh by consumption ; once it got greedy and took a foot 
all at once by amputation; yet again and again its face was 
slapped by his imperious will. As if to taunt it, Wilson 
would not only do his own work, but when some will-less 
professor had a headache or a bunion he would get up out 
of his bed and take his work and electrify his students. 
The world hardly affords a more complete illustration of 
the power of an indomitable will to keep a man alive and 
do a man's work. George Douglass, the Canadian theo- 
logian, was for many years blind and paralyzed, yet he 
labored on as the head of a great seminary. Led before 
an audience and resting one half-disabled arm upon a 
table, he would part the lips that were drawn out of shape 
by his terrible sufferings and pour forth such perfect tor- 
rents of oratory as would sweep that audience to its feet 
and hold them there spellbound until his message was 
delivered. Almost endlessly might this record be con- 
tinued, for it includes Sydney Smith, Prescott, Parkman, 
Cavanagh, William III, Fawcett, and a host of others. 



190 The Eternal Building. 

It is the might of the will that decrees the might of the 
sword. Great commanders have ever been men of great 
will power. What but an iron will nerved Caesar to cross 
the Rubicon ? or Napoleon to fight the second battle after 
the defeat at Marengo ? or Nelson to snatch victory from 
defeat at Copenhagen ? or Wellington to stand the terrible 
pounding of the morning of Waterloo ? or Lawrence to en- 
dure that horrible siege at Lucknow ? or Cardigan to lead 
the noble six hundred in and out of the jaws of hell at 
Balaklava? or Grant to press on through the increasing 
horrors of those seven fearful days in the Wilderness ? or 
Farragut lashed to the shrouds to force his way up Mobile 
Bay ? or Lee to withstand the siege of Petersburg ? or 
Gordon to die at his post at Khartoom ? It was not skill, 
nor numbers, nor might, nor bravery so much as it was the 
unconquerable will of the commanders that has enriched 
the history of the race with these supreme expressions of 
the omnipotence of the will of iron. The vocabularies of 
such men contain no such word as "defeat." They laugh 
at the impossible and perform the miraculous. "I will 
trample upon impossibilities ! " exclaimed the elder Pitt. 
" Impossible! " roared Mirabeau, "talk not to me of that 
blockhead of a word! " " There shall be no Alps! " thun- 
dered Napoleon when his engineers told him those giant 
peaks stood in the way of his armies. And the Alps were 
made as naught by the military road over the Simplon pass. 
" Impossible," said he, " is a word to be found only in the 
dictionary of fools. " Get it out of yours. 

"I can't! it's impossible! " said an officer to Alexander 
in reporting his failure to take a strong fortress. "Be- 
gone! " cried the Macedonian; "there is nothing impos- 
sible to him who will try. " At the front of the defeated 
column he placed himself and led them into the fortress. 
Hannibal was the indomitable of the ancient world. His 
invasion of Italy was at once the march of a discoverer 



Will Power. 191 

and a soldier, and with the passage of the Rhone and the 
Alps mark him as the greatest military genius of the world's 
history. His long occupation of Italy when unsupported 
by Carthage, and the tireless zeal with which he studied to 
arouse the world against Rome, all manifest the dauntless 
energy of his will. "Difficulties only make my feet go 
deeper into the ground," said Napier, the hero of Meeanee. 
In this battle with 400 Britons and 1,600 Sepoys he fought 
an army of 32,000 well-armed Belooches. For three hours 
the battle waged, Napier in the very front; for, said he, 
"the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of 
the work." Of course, led by such a man, victory was as- 
sured. The will of Wellington nerved the will of every 
soldier in the ranks. At Waterloo the British army stood 
up for eight long hours against the deadliest cannonade 
that Napoleon ever ordered. Column after column was 
shot down. Once the entire side of a square was literally 
blown away by a volley of grape. "File up! File up!" 
was the one sullen command that ran along the line as 
thousands fell, and every man as a hero silently stepped 
forward to the gaps. At length the crisis came, the order 
to charge was given, and those who had stood like statues 
under the hail of hell sprang forward with a will, and Na- 
poleon "embarrassed God " no more. 

It takes will to make an orator. Great speeches are not 
accidents. Great speakers have always had to battle with 
themselves to get their well-considered ideas out of them. 
"It is in me and must come out of me," said Sheridan after 
his failure in his first speech in Parliament. And he willed 
himself to the line repeatedly until it did come out; and he 
it was who made the speech against Warren Hastings that 
Fox declared the best speech ever made in the British Com- 
mons. "All the great speakers were bad speakers first," 
said Emerson. "Stumping it through England for seven 

years made Cobden a consummate debater. Stumping it 
13 



192 The Eternal Building. 

through New England for twice seven years trained Wen- 
dell Phillips." " Eloquence must have been born with 
you," said a friend to J. P. Curran. " Indeed, it was not," 
replied the Irish orator; "it was born some three and 
twenty years after me. When I first rose to speak I 
trembled through every fiber; but remembering that in this 
I was but imitating Tully, I took courage and had actually 
proceeded almost as far as ' Mr. Chairman,' when, to my 
astonishment, I perceived that every eye was on me. There 
were only six or seven present, and the room could not 
have contained as many more; yet was it, to my panic- 
stricken imagination, as if I were the central object in na- 
ture, and assembled millions were gazing upon me in 
breathless expectation. I became dismayed and dumb. My 
friends cried, ' Hear, hear ! ' but there was nothing to 
hear." 

"The time will come when you will hear me," cried 
Disraeli, amid the jeers that followed his first speech; and 
it did, the hated Jew wringing by the determination of his 
mighty will even the premiership out of the party that had 
hissed him. Savonarola broke down in his first sermon, 
yet willed himself into preaching to the walls of his cell 
and to the children he met until he gained him that witchery 
of language that made him the prophet of Italy, under 
whose messages popes trembled. "I am in earnest. I 
will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will be as un- 
compromising as truth. I will not retreat a single inch, 
and I will be heard." He was; and the slaves were freed, 
and the world remembers William Lloyd Garrison. 

Nothing succeeds like tenacity; and it takes a strong 
will to hold your nose to the grindstone. The cross on 
an Italian church spire was being fitted to its place. The 
workman could not reach quite high enough to pour in the 
lead to set it, so he hailed a lad from the street and be- 
sought his aid. Holding the lad above him, with only a 



Will Power. 193 

step between them both and death, the hot lead was poured 
in and the cross set; then the workman drew the boy back 
to safety, and slipped down to the scaffold to die. The 
boy, in his fear and haste, had dropped much of the hot 
lead upon the breast of the man, and though it was burn- 
ing its way to his heart, the hero uttered no outcry lest it 
should startle the boy and hurl him to his death. Such is 
the heroic will which conquers though it dies. 

" What can you do with a man who has an invincible 
purpose in him, who never knows when he is beaten, and 
who, when his legs are shot off, will fight on his stumps ? 
Difficulties and opposition do not daunt him. He thrives 
.upon persecution; it only stimulates him to more deter- 
mined endeavor. Give a man the alphabet and an iron 
will, and who shall place bounds to his achievements ? 
Imprison a Galileo for his discoveries in science, and he 
will experiment with the straw in his cell. Deprive Euler 
of his eyesight, and he but studies harder upon mental 
problems, thus developing marvelous powers of mathemat- 
ical calculation. Lock up the poor Bedford tinker in the 
jail, and he will write the finest allegory in the world, or will 
leave his imperishable thoughts upon the walls of his cell. 
Burn the body of Wyclif, and throw the ashes into the 
Severn, but they will be swept to the ocean, which will 
carry them, permeated with his principles, to all lands. 
The world always listens to a man with a will in him. You 
might as well snub the sun as such men as Bismarck and 
Grant." * 

" Were I called upon to express in a word the secret of 
so many failures among those who started out in life with 
high hopes, I should say unhesitatingly they lacked will 
power. They could not half will. What is a man without 
a will ? He is Tike an engine without steam — a mere sport 
of chance, to be tossed about hither and thither, always at 

* Marden, Pushing to the Front. 



194 The Eternal Building. 

the mercy of those who have wills. I should call the 
strength of will the test of a young man's possibilities. 
Can he will strong enough and hold whatever he under- 
takes with an iron grip ? It is the iron grip that takes the 
strong hold on life. What chance is there in this crowd- 
ing, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is 
pusher and pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip 
on life ? i The truest wisdom,' said Napoleon, ' is a reso- 
lute determination.' An iron will without principle might 
produce a Napoleon ; but with character it would make a 
Wellington or a Grant, untarnished by ambition or avarice. 

" ' The undivided will 
'Tis that compels the elements and wrings 
A human music from the indifferent air.' " * 

The Crown of Self-mastery. 

You have heard of the patience of Job — it is very likely 
you would never have heard of the princely patriarch were 
it not for his patience. If, obedient to his wife, he had 
impatiently cursed God and died, the world would have 
been robbed of his matchless example, the philosophy of 
life of its basal treatise, and literature of its first, and one 
is almost ready to say its continuing, masterpiece. Pa- 
tience is the Godlike virtue. Nothing tests a man like 
waiting. The army of the reserve, standing with open 
eyes to behold the carnage of the battle — made more 
evident to them by the ghastly burdens borne past them 
to the rear on the blood-soaked stretchers — their ears open 
to the shriek of every shell and the spiteful hissing of 
man-seeking bullets, their hearts torn by the alternate 
rushes of fear and hope, their brains imagining now the 
forward rush into the arms of death, and then the morrow 
in the distant home when the fateful news is read beside 
the longed-for fireside — these men, though they only stand 

* Marden, Architects of Fate. 



The Crown of Self-mastery. 195 

and wait, are as heroic as those who press the battle to 
the heights and come back with the banners of the van- 
quished. To wait is to endure, and to him that endureth 
comes the crown. 

Will power will find a way or make one, but only time 
and travel will make the way a smooth one. The found 
or made way is not success, but the road to it — and weary, 
thorny, heart-breaking, mind-racking, muscle-aching, pa- 
tience-trying will be the march over the way. " There 
shall be no Alps! " exclaimed Napoleon; but saying so did 
not fit wings to his army and waft them over; but weary, 
fatiguing days and nights of climbing, tugging, road- 
making, bridge-building, cannon-lifting — with many a 
bruise and many a death — proved the Alps no longer a 
barrier to a general who would patiently and persistently 
plod on and on. " Pegging away" was Lincoln's motto; 
it served when he was rail-splitting, and it served when he 
was slave-saving. It made him the man he was. "Keep- 
ing at it all summer " on the one line was Grant's road to 
victory, but all the way the road was wet with the blood 
of heroes sacrificed by the conquering patience of their 
leader. Patience, with its eye on the goal, presses on. 
No amount of opposition or calumny, no threats or wounds 
or defeats, deter it from its onward march; it will push on 
doggedly — stubbornly, it may seem to some — but always 
on, and thus will die with the prize in hand or eye still 
fixed upon it, and either is victory with the Awarder with 
whom we have to do. 

Patience is the head gardener of nature. The sun and 
the soil take time for all their work. A tactless teacher 
asked her scholars, "Can you think of a single thing that 
God cannot do?" A farmer's boy replied: "Yes. He 
can't make a two-year-old colt in a day." That boy had 
not lived on a farm for naught. A horse or a tree or a 
man is not the work of a day. It takes time for them to 



196 The Eternal Building. 

grow. They and the myriad expressions of nature's hand- 
iwork for which they stand are but nature by patience 
presenting her perfect work. An oak is patience erect in 
the storm. A flower is patience perfuming the earth. A 
century plant is patience rebuking successive generations, 
while it lives on to flower in its own good time above their 
graves. A bee is patience gathering sweetness. A beaver 
is patience building a home — gnaw by gnaw the tree is 
felled; inch by inch the beams are moved; little by little 
the mud is carried, but at last there is a home. Go to the 
beaver, thou home yearner, and learn the way to gain one. 
A coal mine is patience stored for the ages' need. A coral 
insect is patience building a continent. Time is patience 
building a universe; the earth is patience adorned with 
beauty. 

Patience — it is the crown of self-mastery! Impatience 
advertises the slave of passion, haste, or greed — the weak- 
ling who is forever fussing, fuming, ranting, but winning 
never. Patience proclaims the man who is the master of 
himself, and thus proves his fitness to master his fellows. 
Patience is the proof of manhood — it is forbearance 
triumphant. Behold patience — self-mastery with its crown 
on ! John Henderson was a student at Oxford, famous 
for his skill in argument. A student of a neighboring col- 
lege, proud of his own skill, sought a private disputation 
with Henderson. Mutual friends introduced them, and, 
the subject determined, the word-battle began. For some 
time it proceeded with candor and patience; then Hender- 
son's antagonist, realizing that he was losing ground, 
seized a wineglass and in his impatience and passion 
dashed its contents into his opponent's face. Henderson, 
without a frown or impatient gesture, wiped the wine from 
his face and said, ''This, sir, is a digression — now for the 
argument." That is patience crowned — self-mastery 
triumphant. 



The Crown of Self-mastery. 197 

The examiner of a candidate for appointment as a foreign 
missionary reported: "The candidate was ordered to 
report at my home at 3 a.m. At that time he arrived, 
and was shown into my study, where he waited for five 
hours for me to appear. After breakfast I asked him if 
he could spell, and when he said he could I ordered him 
to spell 'baker.' He did so correctly. I then examined 
him in mathematics by asking him, ' How much is twice 
two? ' Again he answered correctly, and I dismissed 
him, assuring him that he had passed. I now recommend 
him because of the thorough test to which I put him. He 
is self-denying. At three o'clock of a winter's morning he 
reported for examination, and never asked why such an 
unearthly hour was fixed upon. He is prompt, for at 
three to the tick he was on hand. He is patient. I made 
him wait for me for five hours, when he might as well have 
been in bed, yet he made no sign of impatience when he 
met me. He is good-tempered. He met me as pleasantly 
as he could have done had he been called at a reasonable 
hour and treated as a gentleman when he arrived. He is 
humble. I asked him to spell a word a five-year-old child 
could spell and do a sum the same child could do, and he 
answered without any indignation, never asking me why 
I treated him like a child or a fool. Brethren, he is just 
the man for us. Take him in with all your votes." Such 
examinations are scarcely to be commended, but this one 
was certainly a triumph for the patience of the candidate. 

Patience is the price of success. Talent wins no 
crowns until it has gone to school to patience. Genius is 
only an infinite capacity for taking pains, and patience is 
the one master that can hold genius to its trying task. 
Blessed be drudgery, and patience is its mentor. A poor 
woman, whose life was spent very largely amid the shadows, 
recently testified: " Nothing has given me such courage 
to face my daily tasks and troubles as the remembrance 



198 The Eternal Building. 

of a few words spoken by our old village doctor. I ran 
into his office one day when I was but little more than a 
child, my face betraying the temper and petulance that 
almost forced the tears from my eyes. * What is the mat- 
ter? ' asked the doctor. 'I'm tired. I've been making 
beds and washing dishes the whole long day, and what 
good does it do? It is the same every day, and to-morrow 
I'll have them all to make and wash again. I'm just tired 
of it all.' ' Come, now,' said the doctor, ' look at all these 
empty vials. They are all little, cheap things, not worth 
anything hardly of themselves; but in one I put a deadly 
poison, in another a sweet perfume, in a third a healing 
medicine. Nobody cares for the vials; it is what the vials 
contain that is of worth. Your days and their tasks are 
your vials; the dishes washed or the floor swept or the 
beds made are little homely things — they count for but 
little in themselves; but the sweet patience and zeal and 
holy thoughts that you put into your work are what make 
it valuable and enduring. These are the things that make 
your life. ' " That doctor's prescription is good medicine. 
Take it in large doses whenever you feel one of your 
''spells" coming on, and life will soon begin to have a 
different look on its face. Patience is the virtue that 
enables us to bear all things and endure all things, to 
meet all conditions, and look all events in the eye, with 
that persuasion of mind and grace of control that mani- 
fest the grandeur of a continually self-possessed, non- 
flusterable man. 

German legends say that in the Fatherland there is a 
peculiar plant. Walburgia and another little girl were 
going one day to market. Each had a great basket of fruit 
on her head. Walburgia sky larked along beneath her 
load with great glee, but her companion did nothing but 
worry and grumble every step she took. At last the latter 
asked, "Walburgia, how is it that you, with a basket just 



The Crown of Self-mastery. 199 

as heavy as mine, can get along so swiftly and can have 
fun all the way?" "Why, simple enough," Walburgia 
answered. " I have a little plant that I put on the top of 
my head, and it makes the load so light I can hardly feel 
it." "Indeed! what a precious plant it must be! How 
I wish I had one. Where does it grow? How do you get 
them?" "O, they grow wherever you plant them if you 
will but give them time. The seed comes down from the 
skies; the name of the plant is patience!" Make your 
life a garden; cultivate this wondrous plant. It will pay. 
Patience is content to go one step at a time, but it keeps 
stepping, and thus attains the goal. 

In the Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass. , I was privileged 
to examine one of its great treasures. It is a triumph of 
patience; the monument, three inches high, of the pa- 
tience of an Italian monk of the thirteenth century. I 
count it a greater wonder than the Needle of Cleopatra. 
It is a little globe of boxwood divided into two hemispheres, 
each one and one half inches in diameter. The upper 
hemisphere represents heaven. God is on his throne; a 
crown is on his head; one of his hands upholds a world 
surmounted by a cross. Grouped about the Deity are 
fifty-eight full-proportioned figures of saints and angels, 
each carved so that face and robes are quite distinct, and 
all in the attitude of rendering their homage to the won- 
drous One upon the throne. Peter is plainly to be recog- 
nized by the key he holds. In the lower hemisphere, 
which represents the judgment, twenty-eight full-length 
figures, nineteen half figures, and five heads are carved. 
Here Christ is represented as Judge, and the wicked are 
before him. In the lower part is a representation of hell, 
where hideous figures of grotesque form are undergoing 
various forms of punishment. Throughout this wondrous 
bit of workmanship there is neither break, flaw, nor faulty 
line. Superb workmanship, skillful ingenuity, fervid im- 



200 The Eternal Building. 

agination are here blended by the hand of a master to the 
perfecting of a most extraordinary work of art. What pa- 
tience this tiny wonder represents! Only the deftness of 
the fingers that have with such exquisite delicacy wrought 
this marvel can compare with the patience that held those 
fingers so steadily to their task. You are carving the 
record of your life. Be thou patient in the tracing of 
every line; slight no smallest detail, but patiently fashion 
all for the eye of God and the exhibition of eternity. 

If you expect to conquer or accomplish in the world, 
you must prepare yourself for conquest and accomplish- 
ment. Well says the Arab proverb, "With time and pa- 
tience the leaf of the mulberry tree becomes satin. " Pa- 
tience hath her perfect work, and it makes satin of our 
distempered self. Time and patience train the fingers of 
the pianist until the instrument becomes a living thing 
beneath their touch, and melody soothes or stirs, en- 
trances or exhilarates, the multitudes. Time and patience 
harmonize the movement of the vocal chords with the 
eternal laws of tone, and the singer, with voice divine, 
stands forth to lift our souls to almost beatific ecstacy by 
the inspiration of her song. Time and patience guide the 
brush of the artist from the disfiguring, tantalizing daubs 
and execrable lines until by dint of a full score years of 
patient toil a "Last Supper," or a "Christ Before Pilate," 
or an "Angelus " glorifies the canvas and the patience of 
the painter. Time and patience give the physician's fingers 
that delicacy of touch and his ear that accuracy of percep- 
tion that enable him to read the story of the body's 
health or ailment through the quivering flesh. Time and 
patience train the eye and mind of such men as Louis 
Agassiz, until to show them a bone dug from earth that 
had not been disturbed for ages past all counting enables 
them to tell you the name of the beast of which it once 
formed a part, and if man by the name is not enlightened 




JOHN JAMES AUDUBON. 

There was not a thing God made he did not love, and with 
a patience that was infinite he portrayed the inhabitants of 
field and forest. 

" I would not enter on my list of friends, 

Tho' graced with polished manners and fine sense 

(Yet wanting sensibility), the man 

Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 

— Cowper. 



The Crown of Self-mastery. 201 

as to the fashion of the beast, to reconstruct from that 
single bone the form of the creature from which it came. 
Patience is the father of perseverance, the schoolmaster 
of self-control, and the trainer of all the winning qualities. 
" What are you doing ? " asked a Chinese student, who, 
in despair of ever getting wisdom under the cover of his 
cranium, had thrown his books away, of an old woman he 
found rubbing a crowbar on a stone. il Fm making a 
needle!" He learned the lesson. If the woman had pa- 
tience to rub a crowbar down to a needle, he would possess 
himself in patience until he had rubbed wisdom into his 
brain. He became one of the three wisest men of the 
empire. "How long were you in learning to play ? " some 
one asked Geradini. "Twelve hours a day for twenty 
years," he replied. Such patience made him the greatest 
violinist of his time. "How long were you preparing 
that sermon ? " asked a hearer after Lyman Beecher had 
delivered his great discourse on the "Government of 
God." "About forty years." "Study one year," said an 
Italian master to his pupil, "and I will teach you to sing 
well; study two years, and you may excel; study three 
years, and I will make you the best tenor in Italy; and if 
you will devote yourself as I direct for four years, you 
may bring the world to your feet." When Caffarelli 
sought the instruction of a great master the latter at once 
perceived the possibilities of his marvelous voice and of- 
fered to instruct him without charge if he would agree to 
follow without complaint the instruction given. The 
promise was given, and the first year the master gave his 
pupil nothing but the scales, compelling him to practice 
them, and them only. The second and the third year it 
was the same, and as, at the beginning of the fourth year, 
the pupil expostulated at the continuance of such drudgery, 
the terms of the bargain were read to him for answer. 
The fifth year the teacher varied the instruction by intro- 



202 The Eternal Building. 

during chromatics and thorough bass, and at the close of 
that year, when his pupil was expecting to be led through 
the intricacies of the masterpieces, the teacher said: "Go, 
my son ; I can teach you nothing more. You are the first 
singer of Italy and of the world." It had all come of his 
patient mastery of the scales and diatonics. 

"The only merit to which I lay claim," said Hugh 
Miller, "is that of patient research — a merit in which 
whoever wills may rival or surpass me; and this humble 
faculty of patience when rightly developed may lead to 
more extraordinary development of ideas than even genius 
itself." Handel wore the keys of his harpsichord hollow 
like the bowl of a spoon by the patient persistence of his 
practicing. Thalberg declared that he never dared to 
perform one of his pieces in public until he had played it 
in private at least fifteen hundred times. Kean would act 
his part for months before a glass ere he would trust 
himself to perform it in public; the character, the gentle- 
man villain, in which he won his greatest celebrity, he 
studied before his mirror for eighteen months previous to 
appearing in public. Patience is half the battle! no, no! 
patience is the battle. To labor and to wait is the surest 
road to victory; aye, it is self -victory all the way. "Pa- 
tience is the courage of the conqueror; it is the virtue, par 
excellence, of man against destiny, of the one against the 
world, and of the soul against matter. Therefore this is 
the courage of the Gospel ; and its importance to races 
and institutions cannot be too earnestly inculcated." * 

It is doubtful if in all the annals of patience there is a 
record that much surpasses that of the attempted escape 
of Jesse Pomeroy from the Massachusetts State Prison at 
Charlestown. Observing that the edge of his tin drinking 
cup was finished by the turning of the tin over a wire, he, 
with his bare fingers, bent up the tin, pulled out the wire, 

* Bulwer. 



The Crown of Self-mastery. 203 

pressed back the rim, and returned the cup without fear 
of discovery. This was no ordinary feat, but it was but 
the beginning. Securing in some way a bit of wood, he 
straightened the wire and set it in the wood. With his tiny 
tool thus handled he set to work in silence to grind or 
press the point of the wire to a sharp, cutting edge. This 
was the work of many weeks. With this rude tool he 
cautiously scraped the hardwood planks that formed the 
floor of his cell until he wore through them in two places 
and was able to lift out the plank thus cut. He had to do 
all this work at night, and morning after morning carefully 
rub the dirt into the cracks lest his work be discovered. 
The plank removed, a great joist blocked his way, yet 
through this he cut by painfully boring holes, nearly a 
thousand in number: With the hindering portion of the 
joist removed, the brick wall of the prison was revealed, 
and this he proceeded to attack. Patiently he picked the 
bricks to pieces, and had thus pulverized eight or ten of 
them when his excited appearance led to a thorough ex- 
amination of his cell and the discovery of his operations. 
What astounding patience is this! And by one who 
knew that even with the wall cut through there was still 
the guard to pass and his prison-clad form to hide away 
against detection. Yet for his scant chance at liberty he 
was ready to toil on in patience. Young man, young 
woman, cut yourself out of the cells that dungeon your 
soul. Moment by moment, prod by prod, inch by inch, 
fight your way up and out into the liberty of self-mastery, 
and stand crowned, before God and before men, the 
master of yourself. 

Be free — not chiefly from the iron chain, 

But from the one which passion forges — be 

The master of thyself. If lost, regain 

The rule o'er chance, sense, circumstance. Be free.* 

* Ephraim Peabody. 



204 The Eternal Building. 

" Patience is the guardian of faith, the preserver of peace, 
the cherisher of love, the teacher of humility. Patience gov- 
erns the flesh, strengthens the spirit, sweetens the temper, 
stifles anger, extinguishes envy, subdues pride, bridles the 
tongue, restrains the hand, tramples upon temptation, en- 
dures persecutions, consummates martyrdom. Patience pro- 
duces unity in the Church, loyalty in the State, harmony in 
families and societies; she comforts the poor and moder- 
ates the rich; she makes us humble in prosperity, cheerful 
in adversity, unmoved by calumny and reproach; she 
teaches us to forgive those who have injured us, and to 
be the first in asking forgiveness of those whom we have 
injured; she delights the faithful, and invites the unbe- 
lieving; she adorns the woman and approves the man; is 
loved in a child, praised in a young man; admired in an 
old man; she is beautiful in either sex and in every age."* 
Adorn thyself with her, and thou shalt prove thyself kept 
"in the kingdom and patience " of the King Eternal, arid 
"the God of all patience " will bless you richly. 

Tact. 

A San Francisco physician extracts some substance 
from the blood of the horse, mixes it with alcohol, calls it 
equisine, gives it to drunkards, guaranteeing it to cure 
them. This fellow is on the right track. Get a little 
horse sense into the drunkard, and he might become a 
decent kind of an animal. But the drunkard is not the 
only man by any means that needs this injection. If the 
whole race could be given a hypodermic injection of the 
bacilli of good horse sense, the world would become a 
paradise, a millennium sooner than is now prophesied. 

Tact is brains applied to the art of getting on in the 
world. Tact is that skill in your contact with other men 
that gives you their ears, dollars, votes, respect, praise, 

* Bishop Home. 



Tact. 205 

and love. Tact is the doing of the right thing at the 
right time in the right way. Tact increases the value of 
your brain stock a thousand per cent, and it will open a 
thousand doors to you that may have been even slammed 
in your face. Tact is the ability to make the most of life, 
and the ordinary man with a good supply of it and but 
one talent will accomplish far more than the genius with 
his ten talents and no tact. 

Some of the greatest minds in the world have been the 
most foolish in the management of the little everyday affairs 
of life. Newton got tired of rising from his chair to open 
the door for his cat and kittens, and had two holes cut in 
the door — a big one for the cat and a little one for the 
kittens. Chief Justice Marshall, riding on a Southern 
road, was roused from his reverie to find his carriage 
stalled with a young tree between the body of the car- 
riage and a forward wheel. For the life of him he didn't 
know how to get out of the fix, and he called to a Negro in 
an adjoining field to come and cut down the tree. The 
latter arrived, backed the horse two steps, and the great 
jurist was released. "How much do I owe you?" 
"Dollar, massa." "What! a dollar for that?" "No, 
massa; dollar am for habbin de sense to git de loon out ob 
him fix." Beethoven sent three hundred florins once as 
payment when he only wanted six shirts and as many 
handkerchiefs. A New England professor of mathematics 
went to a store for coffee. "How much will you have ? " 
"Well, I declare, wife didn't say. Better give me a 
bushel." Adam Smith taught all nations economy, but 
lacked the tact to manage his own house. Goldsmith's 
essays are scarcely to be surpassed for shrewd and ex- 
quisite sense, but he never knew the meaning of a dollar; 
and when he went up to seek orders in the ministry put 
on a pair of scarlet breeches. Machiavelli was the prince 
of political strategists, but was without enough ordinary 



206 The Eternal Building. 

wit to get his bread. Dante, with that mind profound, 
hot with indignation against his foes, " could curse better 
than he could conspire."* Dr. Johnson had so little 
ability to measure his antagonist that it was said of him, 
" He uplifts the club of Hercules to crush a butterfly 
or brain a giant." Very true are these words: "Talent 
knows what to do; tact knows how to do it. Talent 
makes a man respectable; tact will make him respected. 
Talent is wealth; tact is ready money. For all practical 
purposes in life tact carries it against talent ten to one. 
Talent has many a compliment from the bench, but tact 
touches fees from attorneys and clients. Talent speaks 
learnedly and logically; tact triumphantly. Talent makes 
the world wonder that it gets on no faster; tact excites 
astonishment that it gets on so fast. And the secret is 
that it has no weight to carry; it makes no false steps; it 
loses no time; it takes all hints; and by keeping its eye 
on the weathercock is able to take advantage of every 
wind that blows." 

The lack of tact is the cause of half the spites and 
heartaches and pretty much all the blunders in the world. 
It never makes a man feel good to tread on his toes, and 
even if a woman has a pound of pigment poorly spread on 
her cheeks, or powder enough to raise biscuits in her eye- 
lashes, she will not thank you for telling her of it. The 
blundering gait and tactless speeches of the best-meaning 
people cause a heap of woe in the world and destroy a 
multitude of friendships. As Kate Sanborn says, "Even 
a cat objects to being rubbed the wrong way." "Thank 
you for trying to sing," said Madam Manager to a young 
lady who had reluctantly yet creditably stepped in to fill 
the gap in the program caused by the failure of the 
"star" to appear. Of course that young lady was of- 
fended. "Well, I guess the mail will be open by this 

* Matthews, Getting on in the World. 



Tact. 207 

time; it was thirty minutes late, so I dropped in to see 
you," was the way a tactless pastor lost the credit of a 
call and irritated a sensitive parishioner. No wonder that 
at the funeral of a saint he selected a hymn as appropriate 
as: 

Laden with guilt and many woes, 
Down to the grave the sinner goes. 

"Does the grave look pleasant to you ?" asked a tact- 
less sympathetic of a nervous sufferer who had no idea of 
dying. "Dear me! How you do look! I do hope and 
pray that you'll die before you burst! " was the cheering 
salutation received by one suffering from dropsy. "Will 
you tell me just exactly what ails me, doctor?" "We 
can't tell till after the post-mortem," was the tactlessly 
candid reply. 

How much more sweetness we should all get out of life 
if we only had wit and tact to lubricate the many points 
of contact with the oil of good nature. School yourself 
to be quick and ready in turning your best side out. In 
diplomacy tact rises to a fine art, because tact is the supreme 
evidence of continual presence of mind. It cannot be 
startled out of good form nor jostled into boorishness. A 
French officer, just back from a long stay at Vienna, was 
introduced to the Empress Josephine, whom he had never 
seen. Speaking of a noted beauty of Vienna, Josephine 
asked, "Do you not think her the most beautiful woman 
you have ever seen?" "I thought so yesterday," was 
the reply of the gallant and tactful soldier. Fontenelle 
was rebuked by a pretty miss for passing her without look- 
ing. "If I had looked, I had not passed," was the nona- 
genarian's reply. We think this boy deserves to become 
immortal; if he does not coast himself into glory, we shall 
be surprised. "Papa, it worries me to think I give 
mamma so much trouble." "She hasn't complained." 

" No; she's so patient. But lots of times when she sends 
14 



208 The Eternal Building. 

me to the store, it is so far away, that I know she must 
get cross worrying until I get back." "Not very often, I 
guess." "O yes; lots of times, and she's always in a 
hurry. Everything is ready for baking when she finds, at 
the last minute, she hasn't any baking powder; or she 
gets a pudding mixed and can't find a nutmeg, and she 
gets awful fussy 'cause the oven's all hot, and company 
coming. I can't run a longdistance, you know, and I feel 
awful sorry for her." "Well, my son, what can we do 
about it ? " "I was thinking you might get me a bicycle." 
He got it. 

"To say graceful things, and to say fitting compliments, 
is one of the fine arts, and one that can be cultivated with 
exceeding profit in the home circle. Some people fall into 
the mistaken notion that bluntness and brusqueness are 
signs of superiority, whereas they are signs of a small and 
mean spirit. There is a gracious quality in speech that 
diffuses light and warmth like sunshine. Just the right 
thing said at the breakfast table will often attune the soul 
to a joyous key for the whole day. If complaint were in 
every household to give place to compliment, what happy 
changes would result. Most of us are as chary of a com- 
pliment, particularly to those we love the best, as though 
it were deadly poison and would prove instantly fatal. In 
fact, instead of being dangerous, there is nothing that so 
lightens the burdens and dreary round of daily drudgery as 
appreciation charmingly expressed. Suppose you, sir, 
should tell your wife that she seems to be growing younger 
and prettier every day, it is not likely that the shock of 
surprise would kill her, but it is altogether likely that the 
words would be like a singing angel to her through the 
day." * 

Tact is the wit that masters circumstances. Nothing will 
so quickly and triumphantly extricate a man from the snare 

* The Watchman. 



Tact. 209 

and failure of untoward situations like ready wit and con- 
summate tact — the two hands of presence of mind. Tact 
never drops the lines. No matter how perilously the char- 
iot may be rocking, it still has wit to hold the reins. 
"Why did you steal my chickens, you miserable black 
rascal ? " thundered an irate slaveholder in bygone days. 
"Why, massa, 'twan't stealing, only swapping like. I'se 
yours, ain't I ? If I'se eat chicken, der am less chickens, 
ob course, but you hab more Nigger, don't you ? " "I 
had rather vote for the devil ! " replied Devereaux, when 
the late John Redmond asked him to vote for him for 
Parliament. "But in the event of your friend declining to 
stand," returned Redmond, "may I count on your sup- 
port ? " "Gentlemen, I only asked for your ears ; I don't 
care for your heads," said another Irish member of Parlia- 
ment when greeted by a flight of cabbages. A hundred 
college boys thought they would run a circus one night, 
and for some time made it unpleasant for performers and 
audience. The clown's attempts to reason with them only 
aroused them to more rowdylike antics, until the patience 
of everyone but themselves was exhausted. "You look 
like gentlemen," cried the clown. "Bravo!" yelled the 
half-educated hoodlums. " Do you intend to annoy these 
three thousand people out of their night's pleasure ? " 
"Yes! yes!" chorused the students. " Have you no re- 
spect ? Have you no mothers or sisters ?" "No! no! " 
they yelled, and the clown gave up in despair. But soon 
he returned to the charge with a new idea in his head. 
" You needn't think you can run this show if 'you do wear 
sixty-cent pants." Now it was the turn of the audience 
to cheer. " Don't get impatient, my baby boys, papa will 
send you your board money very soon." The audience 
cheered again and the students sat in silence. "Let me 
tell you what I seen the other day. I was standing at the 
station when a locomotive knocked a young fellow down. 



210 The Eternal Building. 

His arm was knocked off, his leg twisted, his ribs knocked 
in, his head cut open, and his brains scattered around the 
track. The doctor came and plastered his arm, straightened 
his leg, mended his ribs, and closed the gap in his head, and 
the young man started off. Then the doctor discovered that 
he hadn't put the fellow's brains back in his head. He 
yelled for him to come back, but the young man's friends 
said it wasn't necessary to bother about his brains, because 
he was going to college." That was the end of those 
students; the wit and tact of one had put to shame and 
flight a hundred. 

Tact is the magician who hatches the eggs of success in 
the hat of business, and twirls fate on his fingers to the 
bewilderment of the uninitiated. Without tact a man may 
as well close up shop. Tact is the pianist who knows just 
what keys to strike to produce thunder or lightning, 
swinging march or "heavenly doleful" sounds. Without 
tact don't try to advance in any vocation that calls for 
contact with other human beings. An education in tact is 
worth immensely more than one in classics if you expect to 
get on in the world. There is great need for some sort of 
a Delsarte culture for the tongue and wits. 

"Never saw the like of it!" said a man, admiringly. 
"It is singular," said another. " And what's more, it's 
commendable. Here, boy, gi' me a paper. Here's a 
dime; never mind the change." Before he was half 
through the restaurant his papers were all sold. Reason? 
Simple! He didn't holler a bit, but went from table to 
table in a quiet, gentlemanly, businesslike way, spoke re- 
spectfully, and politely took off his hat. He was a gentle- 
man in rags, and tact was lining his pockets for the future. 
"Are you having a pleasant game ?" asked a deaconess, 
coming suddenly upon a group of half a dozen convales- 
cents playing cards in a hospital ward. "Yes, we've got to 
do something to pass away the time," answered one, rather 



Tact. 211 

sheepishly. " I am sure it must be dull. Wouldn't you like 
something to read between times? " And producing a hand- 
ful of tracts, she " shuffled and dealt " with surprising skill, 
and walked on, leaving tracts and cards all mixed to- 
gether. As she passed out a little later she noticed that 
every man was reading and the cards were idle. Tact 
sets the stars in the crown of saints. 

A woman of "uncertain" age fingered a half dozen 
pieces of dry goods, being very evidently in the throes of 
deciding some question of becomingness. "Is it for your- 
self or a young lady ?" asked Roggs. "Sorry to have 
troubled you," and the lady walked away, leaving Roggs 
to his refoldings. At another counter a woman of like age 
was also in the valley of horrors where she must decide 
with what colors she should adorn society for the next 
twelvemonth. "Is it for yourself or an old lady ?" with 
innocent urbanity asked Mr. Toggs, and the next moment 
he was measuring the "all wool and a yard wide." Read 
the Twenty Years After of these young men, and behold! 
Mr. Toggs is in the office and his name upon the sign, 
while "old Roggs" is tramping the streets cursing his 
hard luck. It was only one word, but it made all the dif- 
ference between success and failure, for the knowing of 
the right word is tact. 

It is but just to say that there is nothing in the world that 
can be so selfish as tact. It is the skill that enables men to 
shut the doors of advancement in the faces of their fellows. 
It is the art that enables the political boss to manipulate 
affairs to the overthrow of right and the enthronement of 
the wrong. Rascals nearly without exception possess rare 
tact. "Address makes opportunities," said Bovee; and 
a good address and a tactful disposition has enabled many 
a thief to prosper. "Mamma, I want some raisins." 
" Take a handful, then, my son." "Won't you take them 
for me, mamma? Your hand's bigger'n mine." The 



212 The Eternal Building. 

trusts will have to look out for themselves when that boy 
grows. When its own hands are not large enough tact 
will enlist the hands of others and keep all the profits. 
All the baneful evils that flow from the trusts, those commer- 
cial monstrosities of the present stage of social progress, 
are the results of the selfish use of a tact that might man- 
umit rather than enslave the race. 

Get tact, but consecrate it to the task of your own en- 
noblement, the good of the race, and the work of the 
kingdom of God. Take lessons of Jesus. The record of 
his contact with friends, inquirers, and foes all proves the 
wonderful perfection of his tact. 

Getting Wisdom Under Cover. 

Books are strange things. Although untongued and dumb, 

Yet with their eloquence they sway the world ; 

And, powerless and impassive as they seem, 

Move o'er the impressive minds and hearts of men 

Like fire across a prairie. Mind sparks, 

They star the else dark firmament. 

"Whom shall we make Lord Treasurer of France?" 
asked Louis XIV of one of his councilors. " The Libra- 
rian of Rheims, your majesty." "Why him?" "He 
has been all his life in the library and has extracted noth- 
ing from it ; he would no doubt take as little from your 
treasury." Ah ! there are many such who live all their 
lives in the very thick of splendor and see nothing of it 
all ; who have wisdom in their hands, but never raise it 
to their eyes ; who live in the world as beasts, munching 
at their crib, grinding at their toil, content with the day 
and the scanty fare, and dying with scarce more store in 
their brain than the horse and the cow that has fed from 
the same crib. Boys and girls who snarl, "O, I don't 
like to read ! " young men and women who gabble and 
gambol away their days and declare reading too dry; poor 



Getting Wisdom Under Cover. 213 

simpletons, that they are and that they will remain! 
They can talk only of the day and but ignorantly of that. 
Their outlook is bounded by the size of their town, and 
they know no more than has happened since they learned 
to listen to the gossip of the street. Said one of them to 
me when I was a lad and talking to him, a man of forty, 
about the bombardment of Alexandria, " Egypt? Sure 
an' that ain't in Oirland, is it ? " Such a one amount to 
anything in the world ? How could he ? Men get from 
the world only because they give j what have such people 
to give ? If it is a fact that you do not like to read, that 
you find no pleasure in reading, that the glory of the past, 
the secrets of science, the wonders of the world's descrip- 
tion, and the studies of humanity found in our better 
novels have no appeal to you, then hang your head in 
shame, and know that there is but a step between you and 
the stark deformity of the idiot whom you neighbor. 
Hide your dislike, blush if by some chance it is uncov- 
ered, for it is a shameful thing to be a selfrdetermined 
fool. Knowing the alphabet, the whole realm of knowl- 
edge is open before you ; to know your letters and but 
little more, as is the case with many, is proof that you are 
too lazy or indifferent to be anything else than a fool. 
The world can have no respect for you, and if you knew 
but a very little more, you would have no respect for your- 
self. 

"Few realize what a great thing it is to learn to read. 
It is something with which we have become so familiar 
that we fail to recognize its great value. The difference 
between one who can read and one who cannot is almost 
as great as the difference between one who can see and 
one who cannot. To know how to read is to possess the 
power of making all other minds tributary to ours. It 
opens a universe that lies hid from the eyes of those who 
have not acquired the art. It unseals the past, and makes 



214 The Eternal Building. 

its treasures of knowledge easily accessible. It enables us 
to know the best that has been thought by the best minds 
of all nations and at all times. It places us in communi- 
cation with those who are seeking to lead the race to 
higher planes of life. To learn how to read adds infinite 
possibilities to life. Carlyle has said that in books lies 
the soul of the whole past times ; the articulate, audible 
voice of the past, when the body and material substance 
of it have altogether vanished like a dream. Mighty fleets 
and armies, harbors and arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, 
many-engined— they are precious, great ; but what do 
they become ? Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, 
Pericleses, and their Greece ; all is gone now to some 
ruined fragments, dumb, mournful wrecks and blocks; but 
the books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, 
still very literally lives ; can be called up again into life. 
All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been is 
lying in magic preservation in the pages of books. To 
know how to read is the key to all this." * 

But many who know all the words in the dictionary are 
still fools. Their brains are empty, their conversation 
flatulent, their wit puerile, their speech unseasoned, be- 
cause they know nothing of the wisdom that lies all about 
them between the covers of the books that can be bought 
for the price of a cigar or a yard of hair ribbon. "Will 
you go and gossip with your housemaid or your stable boy 
when you may talk with queens and kings ; or flatter your- 
selves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your 
own claims to respect that you jostle with the hungry and 
common crowd for entree here and audience there when 
all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its 
society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the 
chosen and the mighty of every place and time ? Into 
that you may enter always ; in that you may take fellow- 

* Tyler, Talks to Young People. 



~ " ' r :' "'Mllll 



™- 








HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 

" She told the story, and the whole world wept 
At wrongs and cruelties it had not known 
But for this fearless woman's voice alone. 



Prophet and priestess ! At one stroke she gave 
A race to freedom, and herself to fame." 

— Paul Laurence Dunbar. 



Getting Wisdom Under Cover. 215 

ship and rank according to your wish ; from that, once 
entered into it, you can never be an outcast but by your 
own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship .there 
your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and 
the motives with which you strive to take high place in the 
society of the living measured, as to all the truth and 
sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take 
in this company of the dead. " * 

" There is no past so long as books shall live!" ex- 
claimed Lord Lytton. "1 go into my library, and, like 
some great panorama, all history unrolls before me. I 
breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of 
Eden's roses yet linger in it, when it was thickened only 
by the sigh of Eve. I see the Pyramids building. I hear 
Memnon murmur as the first morning sun touches him. 
I see the Sphinx when she first began to ask her eternal 
question. I sit as in a theater; the stage is time, the play 
is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! what 
kingly pomp! what processions pass by! what cities burn 
to heaven! what crowds of captives are dragged at the 
wheels of conquerors! I hiss or cry ' Bravo!' when the 
great actors come on shaking the stage. In my solitude 
I am only myself at intervals. I am a Roman emperor 
when I look at a Roman coin. I lift Homer, and I shout 
with Achilles in the trenches. The silence of the unpeo- 
pled Syrian plains, the outcomings and outgoings of the 
patriarchs Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at 
eventide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face, 
reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral 
procession — all these things I can find within the boards of 
my Old Testament. What a silence in these old books! 
what a green pastoral rest, and yet what indubitable 
human existence ! Across the brawling centuries of blood 
and war that lie between I can hear the bleating of Abra- 

* Ruskin, Sesame and Lillies. 



216 The Eternal Building. 

ham's sheep, the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah's 
camels. 0, men and women, so far separated, yet so 
near, so strange, yet so well known, by what miraculous 
power do I know you all? Books are the true Elysian 
fields where the spirits of the dead converse, couched on 
flowers; and to these fields a mortal may venture unap- 
palled. What king's court can boast such company? 
What school of philosophy such wisdom? All the wit of 
all the world is glancing and flashing there. There is Pan's 
pipe, there are the songs of Apollo. Sitting in my library 
at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I 
am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the super- 
natural. They are not collections of printed pages, they 
are ghosts. I take one down, and it immediately speaks 
with me ; it may be in a tongue not now heard on earth, it 
may be of men and things of which it alone possesses 
knowledge. I call myself a solitary; but sometimes I 
think I misapply the term. No man sees more company 
than I do. I travel with mightier cohorts around me than 
ever did Tamerlane or Genghis Khan on their fiery marches. 
I am a sovereign in my library; but it is the dead, not the 
living, that attend my levees." * Of this company and com- 
panionship Macaulay keenly observed, "This placid inter- 
course is disturbed by no jealousies or resentments. These 
are the old friends who are never seen with new faces, who 
are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in 
obscurity. With the dead there is no rivalry. In the dead 
there is no change. Plato is never sullen. Cervantes is 
never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. 
Dante never stays too long. No difference of opinion can 
alienate Cicero. No heresy can excite the horror of Bos- 
suet." f "In my study," observed Sir William Waller, 
"I am sure to converse with none but wise men ; abroad 
it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools." 

* .(Eneas Sage. + Essays. 



Getting Wisdom Under Cover. 217 

Books laugh at time and make an end of space. From 
my study there is a wireless telegraphy to all lands and 
with all the past. Having read, memory at my call lights 
the lamp and turns the scroll of her animotiscope and I 
behold Eve and Adam fleeing shamefaced from the gar- 
den guarded by the flaming sword. To my horror I 
behold cloud pile on cloud, hear increasing thunders roar, 
see lightnings chase lightnings through the affrighted 
heavens, feel the earth beneath me tremble as the foun- 
tains of the great deep are opened and join with descend- 
ing torrents to inundate the world. My heart is palsied 
as about me the waters rise, and though to the Lebanon's 
highest peak I flee, still overtake me; and from a 
drowned world I look to catch the one ray of hope that 
gleams above this universal catastrophe, the light feebly 
streaming from the flickering wick in the ark that above 
the mountains sails. Before me pass the host led by 
Moses that bear forth from Egypt the bones of Jacob. 
For them I behold the wall of cloud intervene and the 
Red Sea divide; my ears resound with the death cries of 
that Egyptian host who sink to rise no more in the sick- 
ening swirl of reuniting waters, and then I am charmed as 
Miriam and Israel's womanhood strike their timbrels and 
intone their joy-song. I behold at Joshua's command the 
sun stand still on Gibeon and the moon halt in her rising 
over Ajalon. David strikes Philistia's champion dead 
before me, and then I hear him as his fingers, deftly 
thrumming harp strings, drive demons from the soul of 
Saul. For me rises the splendor of Solomon, and mine 
eyes behold the gorgeous beauty of the temple and the 
palaces and the city of which the half has never yet been 
told. I stand beside half-crazy Ahab, and, like Hamlet 
watching the play of his uncle's features as the players 
represent the scene of the King of Denmark's murder, I 
watch the play of hope and fear upon his evil face as the 



218 The Eternal Building. 

contest of the gods — Elijah's and the Four Hundred and 
Fifty's — goes on. All my soul is stirred as at eventide the 
race of idolatrous prodigals rend their garments and then 
uplift the cry, "The Lord is God! The Lord, he is the 
God! " I look within the magnificent palace of Ahasuerus 
and gaze with loving eyes on the olive-tinted beauty of 
that girl so brave who, for love of her people, courts life or 
death from the smile of her king and husband. I behold 
the Master of the Magicians in the court of Babylon look 
into the eyes of a king and read the thought that he had 
forgotten; and am inspired to face the lions of my day 
with a confident faith in the foe-controlling power of my 
God, as I behold a lion crouch low to give Daniel a pillow 
for his head, and other kingly beasts nestle beside him 
that the night damps chill not him who had become ac- 
customed to the comforts of a prince's bed. Sitting with 
Belshazzar and a thousand of his lords, I am confounded 
by the Hand that writes its mystic message on the wall. 
I am amazed at the power of human eloquence as I be- 
hold the multitude swaying like the waving branches of a 
forest, as Demosthenes thunders out his Philippics against 
the ambitious ruler of Macedon; and I cheer and shout as 
champion after champion who has become my friend is 
crowned the victor in the many amphitheaters of Greece. 
I march in Alexander's conquering phalanx, and am in 
that fray when Europe at Arbela smote Asia the blow 
from which she recovered not for a thousand years. I 
see Romulus when he breaks ground for the first habita- 
tion of the Eternal City, and watch with amazement as 
the work goes on that crowns those seven hills with splen- 
dor and draws the tribute of all the nations to the new 
city by the Tiber. 

For me time seems to roll back and gives me life in that 
time when of all the past I should like to have lived, the 
time when Jesus was here among men; and I am awed 



Getting Wisdom Under Cover. 219 

and thrilled and inspired by the long spectacle of wonders 
beginning with an opening heaven, descending angels, and 
celestial choirs, and ending not until a world in midnight 
darkness at high noon is riven by a lightning flash that 
opens graves and rends the temple's veil in twain, and He 
who died amid that flash a conqueror marches forth from 
his tomb and all alive with a glorified humanity rises from 
Olivet into heaven. I gaze into the sky on the eve of a 
battle's rush and see the flaming symbol that Constantine 
declares to be a cross; and in the later years hear Julian 
the Apostate exclaim, as death raps at his heart, " O, Gali- 
lean, thou hast conquered ! " I am at Tours and behold the 
heaps of bloody slain that Europe piles up there when her 
mightiest exertions beat back the Moslem hordes and set 
bounds past which the Koran shall never hold sway. I 
tread the deck of the Sa?ita Maria with Columbus and as 
anxiously as he peer toward the whither whence the bird 
has flown, and shout for joy with him when Rodrigo 
Triana from the Pinta's lookout cries, "Land ! Land ! " 
With the Pilgrim Fathers amid winter's stormiest winds I 
kneel at Plymouth Rock, and with Captain Smith have 
cause to think that of all the Indian maidens of our history 
no one can with Pocahontas compare. I am amazed at the 
cowardice of men as I see Henry IV, king and emperor, stand 
barefoot in the snow through the hours of that night at 
Canossa to prove his submission to a pope; yet I can exult 
the more that that same Germany builds another son who 
dares to front the papal power, as I behold Luther at 
Worms sturdily contend for the faith once delivered to the 
saints. Thus far my eyes have not been lifted from the 
earth, but now Galileo and Tycho Brahe and Herschel bid 
me to their windows, and I look through their magic 
glasses to find the heavens bowing low to meet me. My 
heart quails as I behold the pride of the pope and his most 
loyal Spain, the Armada, full sailed and arrogant, draw 



220 The Eternal Building. 

nigh to freedom's motherland on direst mischief bent; 
but, as of old, when Egypt pressed hard on Israel, "the 
depths covered them; they sank to the bottom as a stone." 
I am at the Boyne and see Freedom tilted at the points of 
clashing sabers, and Freedom winning because her chief was 
brave and her foes deserted by their coward king; that 
day of which the noble foeman Sarsfield said, " Change 
kings and fight it over, and changed shall be the laurels. " 
But to have made that change would have been to 
enthrone ecclesiastical tyranny and ignorance over the 
march of the English tongue and race. I behold that 
scene of unsurpassable import when a hundred traitors 
signed the roll that made their names immortal and 
squarely faced the fact that if they did " not hang together 
they would separately; " and then sent forth their Wash- 
ington to give effect to the high declaration they had that 
day proclaimed; I see, also, the scene that wipes "traitor " 
from their names as the hero of the horrors of Valley 
Forge receives the sword of Cornwallis, for "when treason 
prospers none dare call it treason." I follow Napoleon 
from his humble post at Toulon through the Terror and 
Egypt and the consulate to the empire, and marvel as 
nation after nation crumbles beneath his tiny yet iron 
hand. I walk, also, the deck trod by the Nemesis of Na- 
poleon, and fathom some measure of the working of 
that higher Power against whom none are strong enough to 
cope, as Nelson wins at Aboukir, Copenhagen, and Tra- 
falgar. I feel the cooling press of the hand of Florence 
Nightingale, the one ray of humanity radiating from the 
shameful folly that made a slaughterhouse of the Crimea. 
I stand amid the shock of contending heroes as brothers 
hurl themselves to death against each other at Chicka- 
mauga and Gettysburg; and I look over the shoulder of 
Lincoln as with a tiny pen he inscribes his name on fame's 
deathless roll, and signs the words that strike the shackles 



Getting Wisdom Under Cover. 221 

from millions living and unborn. I behold with almost 
doubting eyes the breach in the walls of Rome, and then 
feel compelled to shout as the papal flag falls down from 
the City of the Seven Hills, and the flag of a united and 
priest-free Italy rises amid the shouts instead. Before me 
proud France is humbled, and from petty nothingness the 
German principalities and mimic kingdoms become an im- 
perial Fatherland. With Livingstone and Speke and Stan- 
ley and Taylor I see the heart of the Dark Continent, with 
Cook I rub the ice of the Antarctic regions, and with 
Franklin and Kane and Greely and Peary and Nansen 
travel toward the northern pole. 

From time's beginning to the world's present there is 
not a life or a deed of race-reaching influence that is not 
mine if I will but give myself to find it. Remember 
these few events to which I have referred are but epoch 
markers; there are many more, and between them you 
will find the spice and joy of life. You may attend the 
festivals and tournaments and joy-makings of all the 
nations. For you every hero will play his part, and every 
clown perform. You may watch kings at their love- 
making, and queens at their dressmaking; statesmen 
building empires, and Stephensons building engines; mu- 
sicians composing oratorios, and merchants making com- 
merce. Poets will sing for you, orators declaim for you, 
sculptors chisel for you, and painters make canvas speak 
to you. Scientists will tell you about everything in the 
earth, and under the earth, and in heaven, and in all the 
space between. Philosophers will solve ten thousand 
riddles for you, and propound a million more. Theology 
will lead you out into the eternities and disquisate inter- 
minably upon themes which it is not within the scope of 
human reason to fathom, but it will have a bright light of 
unfading hope and enrapturing joy for you at every hard 
turning of life's weary way. And ail this domain of intel- 



222 The Eternal Building. 

lectual splendor is yours; here you are in truth monarch 
of all you survey — with your eyes and retain by the exer- 
cise of your memory. It is a kingdom with which to en- 
rich your life. You will not be able to subdue it all in 
your lifetime, but by daily care to freight each moment 
with knowledge you will master a surprising store of 
wisdom in a lifetime. 

Nor need you be rich to be wise. The price of one suit 
of clothes or of one Sunday dress will purchase a wonderful 
library of the world's masterpieces. Economize every- 
where else before you economize your brain. What a 
shame that men, created in the image of God and en- 
dowed with brains as the one means of communing with 
him, should, out of pure laziness and stinginess, econo- 
mize in the things that go for the culture of that endow- 
ment. Economy in brain manufacture makes the world a 
universal idiot asylum and gives Satan ready dupes. Re- 
deeming grace will save a born fool, but it is doubtful if 
there is any power that can morally transfigure a self-kept 
one. The people who know the least are the most con- 
ceited; they know so little that they don't know that they 
don't know anything, and all you can do when you come 
in contact with their despicable ignorance is to grit your 
teeth and make good your escape as quickly as possible. 
Don't be stingy in feeding in the raw material of brain- 
making. Put some good books in your home before you 
carpet the floor or put in a sofa; as for bric-a-brac and 
pictures where no books are, they but cry, ' 'Within these 
walls dwells an empty-headed dunce." Economize your 
stomach and let the back of your coat shine a little, if by 
so doing you can give your head such a square meal that 
your whole character will shine with the result. There is 
immensely more brain starvation in the world to-day than 
stomach starvation, and it is woeful to realize that so few 
of the starving know the real name of their craving. A 



Getting Wisdom Under Cover. 223 

cure for the mad rush and whirl after pleasure, compan- 
ionship, comfort, peace of mind, and ennoblement would 
be found if the restless roamers would give their heads an 
occasional picnic in some grove of high-class fiction, and 
now and then take a round-trip excursion through the 
land of pure, delightful literature. 

" What shall I read ? " It is a wise question. You will 
be very largely like what you read. Selection is but the 
literary form of the inevitable temptation that comes to 
prove our command of ourselves in every walk of life. 
Have a care what you read. Voltaire, as a mere lad, got 
his hands on a skeptical poem; the virus never left his 
brain, and made him the unholy scoffer at all things true 
which he became. Lincoln early in life read Paine's Age 
of Reason, and to it he owed those years of terrible grop- 
ing through the dark that did not completely end until 
the overwhelming responsibilities of the years of war forced 
him to his knees. Two mere boys are now in the prisons 
of New York State for seeking to wreck a train on the 
New York Central Railroad. They concocted their plans 
on the lines of the dime novels they were reading. The 
novels of Marryat have been the chief agent of leading 
hundreds of boys to sea, and the dime and half-dime 
Western tales of blood and Indians have peopled the 
prisons and cemeteries of the West with the wandering 
boys of Eastern homes. The influence of good books is 
still more far-reaching. The Voyages of Captain Cook 
made a missionary of William Carey, and quickened the uni- 
versal march of Christianity to double time. The Imita- 
tion of Christ and Taylor's Holy Living and Dying were 
stones in the foundation of John Wesley's character, and 
Luther's Notes on Romans did much to shape his theolog- 
ical opinions. Coleridge, in turn, was constantly stirred by 
his study of Southey's Life of Wesley. 

That books know no geographical boundaries and can 
15 



224 The Eternal Building. 

touch hearts and arouse life across any degree of time or 
space is evidenced again and again as we read of their in- 
fluence. Beecher declared that to Ruskin he owed his 
knowledge of the art of seeing. Emerson's nature studies 
affected the whole life of Tyndall. Goldsmith with his 
Vicar of Wakefield aroused the poetical genius of Goethe. 
Erasmus had no friend so dear as Cicero. Napoleon 
never tired of praising Ossian. Gladstone was in love 
with Homer, and enjoyed a preheavenly friendship with 
Butler. John Sharp always said that the Bible and 
Shakespeare made him Archbishop of York. 

Thoreau's rule, when we look through its sheen and note 
its core, is good: "Read not the Times; read the 
Eternities." That is, Don't waste your time on the 
ephemeral. Read for brain-making, character-building, 
soul-enlarging; not for killing time or the pleasure of 
the moment. God pity the man who has any time to 
kill! He had better kill himself; if he lives, it is but to 
rot. 

I know nothing better to read than biography. It is the 
blood of history. " Know men " and you know the world; 
let your knowledge of men become as extensive as the life 
of the race and you know the race. In biography you will 
find history the most interesting. It will whet your intel- 
lectual scythes for the harvest of all the great events of 
the past. It is easy to make biography personal; you be- 
come en rapport with the man who makes history, see the 
world through his eyes, love as he loves, hate as he hates, 
and your fortunes rise and fall with his. You are a French- 
man when you read Napoleon, a German when you read 
Frederick the Great, an Englishman when you read Crom- 
well or Wellington, and an American when you read 
Washington, Lincoln, or Grant. There is always much 
romance about a great life, and in the hands of any com- 
petent biographer the truth of a life is always far more 



Getting Wisdom Under Cover. 225 

stirring than fiction. To climb with the poor boy out of 
poverty into wealth and fame, or to turn wealth and place 
humanity's weal, like Shaftesbury, or Lowell, or Glad- 
stone, or Phillips, this, too, has its romance. Nor will 
you find biography without the spice of life. That is a 
poor telling of any life that wins not tears, and if there be 
tears and the story is true to life, laughter is not far away. 
There are tears in the life of Wendell Phillips, but when 
you go with him on board the cars and get into a nest of 
preachers who are not with him on the slavery question, 
and this dialogue occurs, you are very apt to smile: " Are 
you trying to free the Niggers?" "Yes, sir." "Well, 
why do you preach up this way ? Why don't you go down 
South?" "Pardon me, but are you a preacher?" "I 
am." "Are you trying to save souls from hell ? " " That 
is my work." " Well, why don t you go down there ? " 

Plutarch's Lives have been the making of many men. 
Read them. But there have been many great "Lives" 
since his day ? True, and I think Dr. John Lord tells their 
story most charmingly. His Beacon Lights of History is 
Plutarch's Lives brought up to date. Get hold of them 
and feed on them until we hear from you in the world. 

What about fiction ? Read it, but know what you read. 
Profit by the experience of older readers, and waste no 
time on worthless, vice-extenuating stuff, nor on that 
wishy-washy trash that hasn't sufficient force even to be 
bad — mere wasters of good paper and unredeemable time. 
Be careful of your fiction diet both as to quality and 
quantity. Fiction is but the dessert of literature; to too 
many it is the first course, and they partake so greedily 
that they have no room for the substantials. Three dishes 
of soup leave no room for the turkey. Take a little fic- 
tion now and then for thy appetite's sake, but wrest not 
this kindly injunction to so foul a use as many wrest 
Paul's advice to Timothy. 



226 The Eternal Building. 

Professor A. R. Wells, of the Golden Rule, has some 
wise words to the fiction fiend : "Who gets more enjoy- 
ment out of eating, the pampered millionaire, whose 
tongue is the wearied host of myriads of sugary, creamy, 
spicy guests, or the little daughter of the laborer, trotting 
about all the morning with helpful steps, who has come 
a long two miles with her father's dinner, to eat it with him 
from a tin pail ? And who gets more pleasure out of read- 
ing, the satiated fiction glutton, her brain crammed with 
disordered fragments of countless scenes of adventure, 
love and tragedy, impatient of the same old situations, the 
familiar characters, the stale plots — she, or the girl who is 
fired with a love of history, say, who wants to know all 
about the grand old, queer old Socrates, and then about 
his friends, and then about the times in which he lived, 
and then about the way in which they all lived, then about 
the Socratic legacy to the ages ? Why, will that girl ever 
be done with the feast ? Can you not see, looking down 
on her joy with a blessing, the very Lord of the banquet, 
who has ordered all history and ordained that the truth 
he fashions shall be stranger always than the fiction man 
contrives ? Take the word of a man who has made full 
trial of both. Solid reading is as much more interesting 
and attractive than frivolous reading as solid living is more 
recreative than frivolous living. " 

Endlessly might we think together on this theme. We 
have not begun to say what its fruitfulness commands. 
But let me plead with you in all your reading not to forget 
or neglect the book of books. To know it is to know the 
world and man and God. To live by the knowledge it will 
give you is heaven below and heaven beyond. It is cheer- 
ing to know that the two greatest novelists of our tongue 
were lovers of this book. " Bring me the book," said the 
dying Scott to Lockhart. "What book ? " " There is but 
one— the Bible." Surely it was his "Talisman" at the 



Getting Wisdom Under Cover. 227 

portals of the celestial city ! Read again that beautiful 
tribute of Dickens, as he tells of Harriet Carker reading 
to poor Alice Brown from " the Eternal Book for all the 
weary and the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, 
and neglected of this earth — read the blessed history in 
which the blind, lame, palsied beggar, the criminal, the 
woman stained with shame, the shunned of all our dainty 
clay, has each a portion, that no human pride, indifference, 
or sophistry, through all the ages that this world shall last, 
can take away, or by the thousandth atom of a grain re- 
duce — read the ministry of Him who, through the round 
of human life, and all its hopes and griefs, from birth to 
death, from infancy to age, had sweet compassion for and 
interest in its every scene and stage, its every suffering 
and sorrow." 



THE TEMPLE WITHIN THE 
DOME. 



Conscience is a thousand swords. — King Richard III. 

Conscience does make cowards of us all.— Hamlet. 

My conscience, hanging about the neck of my heart, says very wisely to me, 
" Budge not." " Budge," says the fiend. " Budge not," says my conscience. 
— Merchant of Venice. 

In the commission of evil, fear no man so much as thyself. Another is but 
one witness against thee ; thou art a thousand. Another thou mayest avoid ; 
thyself thou canst not. Wickedness is its own punishment. — Francis Quarles, 
u Enchiridion." 

There are organic and instinctive activities of conscience, by which we fore- 
bode punishment or anticipate reward. Who denies this ? Not Nero, when 
he stabs himself or causes his servant to hold the sword on which he falls. 
Not Nero, when he hears groans from the grave of his mother, whom he 
murdered the other day, at Baiae. Tacitus says, as I recollect at this moment, 
that Nero, after he murdered Agrippina, heard sonitum tuba planctusque e 
tumulo, the sound of a trumpet and groans from her grave. He had had no 
Christian education. He had not been brought up wrongly, and probably did 
not feel, as Hume did, that it was necessary to explain his qualms of con- 
science by a shock he received in his youth. Nero had an education drawn 
out of a black sky and the blood-soaked sods of old Rome ; and yet he antici- 
pated the action of the Furies behind the veiL Who will stand here and affirm 
that these moral fears which in all ages have expressed themselves in what all 
religions have taught, as to the Furies and Nemesis and the Avenging Fates, 
and as to what awaits us in time to come beyond death, are not expressions 
of an organic and ineradicable instinct in man ? If God makes an instinct, 
there is always something to match it. The instinct of a migrating bird finds 
a south to match it ; an ear, sound to match it ; a fin, water to match it. We 
walk directly out upon this universal organic possession of man, and infer the 
existence of its correlate. The poor bee throws out its antennae, and touches 
things near it ; and conscience throws out its antennae, and touches things 
behind the veil. Conscience makes cowards of us all, not on account of 
anything this side of the veil, but of something on the other side. But when 
conscience makes cowards of us all is it merely of some arrangement of the 
molecular atoms in the universe, merely of some shiver of the ultimate particles 
of this inert stuff that we call matter, merely of a Somewhat, or is it a Some 
One, that conscience makes us afraid ? I have yet to find a materialistic philos- 
opher who does not admit that this foreboding organic instinct is human. 
This is the way conscience is made ; and I undertake to say that it is not 
bunglingly and mendaciously made.— Joseph Cooh, Boston Monday Lectures, 
" Conscience." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TEMPLE WITHIN THE DOME. 

The Superintendent of Construction. 

TN Nuremburg, in a room of a house that faces the 
* Church of St. ^Egidius, you may see, supported on an 
iron tripod, a wooden globe twenty inches in diameter, 
covered with a dingy old piece of vellum that was once 
brilliant in red and gold and green. On that globe you 
will find the earth's divisions sketched according to the 
conception of the earth held by fifteenth-century geog- 
raphers. But this globe has something added; at the 
twenty -fourth degree of latitude, under the sign of Cancer, 
there is an island indicated and called "Antilia." One 
day two men stood gazing upon that globe. One was its 
maker, he who had drawn Antilia, and as he put his finger 
on the strange-looking spot he said to the other, " There 
it is." The man who looked was Christopher Columbus ; 
he who said, " There it is " was Martin Behaim. An- 
tilia was America. Of Columbus we have heard much, 
and I do not say one word too much, but who has heard 
of Martin Behaim ? The world scarce knows he lived, 
but his work abides. 

In the many and masterly works on character-building 
that the century has produced it seems to me there has 
been a failure to recognize adequately the Martin Behaim 
of manhood-making. Conscience is the world discoverer. 
Conscience is, humanly speaking, the architect of man- 
hood, or, if you prefer it so, conscience is the superin- 
tendent of construction appointed by the divine Archi- 
tect to supervise the execution of the heavenly plans. 

231 



232 The Eternal Building. 

Conscience points its finger to the path and says: There is 
the way ; walk ye in it. There is the sea for you to sail; 
spread your canvas. There is the task to match thy skill; 
up with your sleeves and at it. There is your duty; lions 
are everywhere, famine surrounds, wolves howl, pestilence 
rages, snakes abound, death is bold, but go! There is 
thy duty. Thus speaks the conscience. We can build 
aright only as we recognize it and seek its culture and 
assure it obedience. Conscience is the thermometer of the 
moral sense. True, the old illustration, a compass, holds, 
but in certain relations I deem it the indicator of the 
temperature rather than the guide of the moral sense. 
The clearer our apprehension of moral truth the more 
commanding will be the voice of conscience and the more 
terrible its rebukes if its commands are not obeyed. 

If man is to live in harmony with the moral sense — law 
of the universe — he must apprehend what that law is. He 
can live no better than he knows. His conscience will 
give no more light than it has grasped. A clear percep- 
tion of the moral law is essential, then, to the develop- 
ment of the personal moral sense. How are such percep- 
tions gained ? How can these moral laws be found ? 
The easiest and simplest way is to take fast hold on the 
truth proclaimed in that revelation which God has made 
of himself and of man's relation to him, to be found in 
that wondrous book well called the word of God. Re- 
member in your quest for truth you found God, the Intel- 
ligent First Cause of the things that be, and the Imma- 
nent Ruler of the Universe. It would be very easy for you 
now to reason that such a Being would not leave man un- 
instructed, and so speedily and rationally reason up to the 
necessity for such a revelation from God to man as the Bible 
declares itself to be. But having discovered the vast reach 
and power of your intellectual endowment, you may be 
somewhat puffed up, and not satisfied to reach the truth so 



The Superintendent of Construction. 233 

easily, or you may be so conceited as to refuse to give heed 
to such a process of reasoning ; having a mind, you are de- 
termined to test it, and follow only where it leads. Is 
there any hope that the reason alone will guide you unto 
the light that streams from the laws of the moral universe? 
There is, and that the most skeptical may have no occa- 
sion to rear the structure of their character on any other 
than the surest foundation, I would lead your thought 
along the path of reason unlit by the effulgent radiance 
of revelation and press from one self-evident truth to an- 
other as the steps by which to enter the holy and re- 
splendent temple of the conscience. While the results 
that follow the first course may be more immediate and 
that course is never to be deemed less reasonable — in- 
deed, it is to be questioned if it is not the most reason- 
able — the latter will give, perchance, a more confident ring 
to your voice whenever you are called on to give a reason 
for the faith you cherish and by which you shape your life. 
Reverently, then, with holy hands, and knowing the 
priceless value of that to which we shut our eyes, we close 
the book that has transformed the world through the 
transformation of millions of its people, and bid our mind 
lead on. We start with an overwhelming sense of the 
truth for which the philosophers of all the schools to-day 
contend, that the Eternal Source from whence all things 
proceed makes for righteousness. This Spencer and Mill 
and Arnold and other great non-Christian philosophers 
affirm as sturdily as those of the Christian schools. We 
accept, too, and that without space or seeming necessity 
for argument, that man is immortal, that death does not 
end all; and with a righteous God and our immortal spirit 
before our eyes, and an inherent belief that there are 
present and eternal relations between that righteous God 
and our immortal spirit, we put foot on the ladder of 
reason and start in our climb for the realm of moral law. 



234 The Eternal Building. 

In seeking to guide you up this ladder of self-evident 
truth I wish you to understand that I expect to be guided 
myself very largely by that American philosopher, Joseph 
Cook. Such quotations as may appear in this part of the 
discussion not otherwise accounted for will be made from 
his lecture on "Certainties in Religion."* 

The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 
It was the rule of Demosthenes that every speech 
should begin with an incontrovertible proposition. Let 
us obey him. We were born; we shall die. Not long 
ago, though the world was, we were not in it; not long 
hence, though the world continue to be, we shall be in it 
no longer. "This is arithmetic. This is the clock." 
Death is inevitable. We who are here are soon to be here 
no longer. De Tocqueville declared that it was vain to 
try to make any man religious who had no thought of dy- 
ing. The first, then, of the certainties which we may well 
fix in our mind is this: we shall die. This no man and no 
science dare question. The London streets that have 
echoed with the strains of jubilee marches will echo soon 
with the mournful strains of the funeral dirge as the queen, 
having gone the way of all the living, is laid with her 
fathers. And so it shall be wherever a man dwells, there 
shall man die. Of all the thousand millions on earth 
when the bells of independence pealed not one lives to- 
day, and of the fifteen hundred millions now alive scarce 
a corporal's guard will live to date a letter in the year 
2000. We are all to die, and if you got your ears to the 
lips of each one of these dying millions, you would learn 
that one and all of them long to die in peace and go 
hence with the confidence that all is well. This is the 
universal rule. The Confucianist with his burning in- 
cense, the Hindu with his pleadings for Nirvana, the 

♦My copy is found in The Complete Preacher \ combined volume. 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



"Lincoln was God's nineteenth-century, prophet. He 
liad the faith of Abraham, the leadership of Moses, the states- 
manship of Pericles, the massive intellectual force of St. 
Paul, the political sagacity of Richelieu, the integrity of Crom- 
well, and the patriotism of Washington." — A tribute written 
for this page by Bishop Charles H. Fowler. 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 235 

Mohammedan with his greed for sensual delights, the in- 
fidel with his eyes to the wall, the atheist with his grit 
teeth and stare at the blank, the sinner with his writhing 
agonies of despair, and the Christian with the shout of re- 
demption triumph on his lips — ask them one and all, and 
their universal outcry is, "We want to go hence in 
peace." 

Can they? That certainly is conditional. If the moral 
law is universal in its reign (as, until it is proved other- 
wise, we are warranted in believing), we shall not escape 
from it by passing hence; therefore it is idle to expect 
that we shall go hence in peace if we have not so con- 
formed to that law while living here as to be at peace with 
it in the present. We cannot go hence in peace unless we 
live here in peace, and we can live in peace here only by 
keeping in harmony with our environment. What is that? 
" Our environment is made up of God, of the plan of our 
own natures, and of our record in the past; and therefore 
we must be harmonized with God in conscience and our 
record, or, in the very nature of things, there cannot be 
peace for us." With this environment we must either be 
in harmony or out of harmony. If we are in harmony 
with it — that is, if we are in harmony with God, our con- 
science, and our record, we will have peace; if we are out 
of harmony with it — there can be no peace for us here or 
anywhere where the same law prevails. 

Shall we breathe a little here? Yet so pause as to 
"bring for a moment a solemn hush, such as will exist in 
our souls when eternity breathes on our cheeks. You say 
that it is a very commonplace proposition that we are 
going hence ; but did you ever calculate how many mature 
working hours there are in an ordinary lifetime ? Very 
few men begin labor for themselves earlier than at twenty- 
five years of age. Very few continue such labor beyond 
the seventieth year. Now, between the twenty-fifth year of 



236 The Eternal Building. 

life and the seventieth there are forty-five years, and if 
you throw away in each year fifty-two days for Sundays 
and thirteen for vacations and illness and other interrup- 
tions, you have three hundred working days a year. 
That is to say, in forty-five years you have 13,500 working 
days. Now, suppose that you labor ten hours a day, a 
very large average, to be continued through forty-five 
years, you will therefore have in the forty-five mature 
years of your life 135,000 working hours. At the end of 
that very short stretch of time you will go hence. Some 
of you have about a hundred thousand working hours left. 
Some of you have not sixty thousand; some of you not 
thirty thousand. Really there is no doubt about the prop- 
osition that at the end of 135,000 working hours any man's 
life which has already had twenty-five years in it will be 
over." This is a certainty. These hours will soon pass, 
and you will pass hence with their record. The world may 
stand, but you will pass beyond. The trees will continue 
to shake their leafed and unleafed branches at the storm, 
but their leaves will fall upon a mound where your dust 
has been laid to rest. Men will continue to tread this 
globe with conquering steps, but your place in the ranks 
another will fill. God will press on from conquest to con- 
quest, and on the great harp of eternity thrum many a 
psalm of redemptive victory. Increasing millions of the 
redeemed will continue to praise him, but you and I will 
listen to the wondrous music from the eternal mounts and 
not from these temporal valleys. Aye, soon we shall be at 
the parting of the ways. Life's bell will ring our guardian 
angels to their evensong. Eyes with tears made dim will 
look upon the clay tabernacle which we now tenant, and 
in the hush of that moment, when our soul feels the breath 
of the unseen, and our heart falters with awe, and we 
vainly shrink from the messenger who has come, who is 
there that dare whisper : * ' The dying care not how they die ? 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 237 

Speculation to them is as comforting as certainty, folly as 
priceless as wisdom, wrath as welcome as peace ? " You 
know that none but a fiend would intrude such thoughts 
upon the dying, for no matter how they have lived, their 
hearts cry out, " O, that I might go hence in peace." 

We desire when we go hence to pass to a " house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens," do we not ? Is 
not this the universal longing ? Well, let me put you face 
to face with a great question : Would it be possible to live 
happily in that house unless we are at peace with its 
Builder and Master — loving what he loves, in harmony 
with his purposes, and in obedience to his rule ? Could 
we live at peace in that eternal mansion if we have not 
built our life according to the pattern that the Builder of 
the mansion has given for all who would dwell eternally 
therein ? Surely it is folly to think so. Give a pauper a 
palace, and he would be at home only in a corner of the 
cellar. The drawing-room would be a horror to him. He 
would dust his purple robe before daring to sit down lest 
he soil the throne. The costly bric-a-brac he would not 
dare to touch lest he crush it in his clumsy fingers. A 
man must be built a king to live a king. So a man must 
be built for the eternal mansions if he is to dwell at peace 
in them. It is impossible for a man so to build himself 
unless he is in harmony with his environment; so we are 
forced back again to our proposition that a man must be 
at peace with himself and God here or he cannot expect to 
pass hence in peace. 

Among the certainties of moral import which we are 
called upon to face these three rank first: We cannot 
escape from our own conscience; we cannot escape from 
our own record; we cannot escape from God. In that 
terrific contest when the Monitor put an end to the con- 
quering course of the Merrimac the Cumberland^ went 

* The illustration is Mr. Cook's. 



238 The Eternal Building. 

down in water so shallow that her topgallant flags still 
showed above the waves. When the ship went down a 
surgeon attending the wounded below was nearly stran- 
gled by the inrushing waters, but managed to gain the 
deck, then worked aloft into the rigging, from which he 
was picked off nearly dead. "Now, the insidious and al- 
most unseen persuasion of human nature is that when we 
go down in the sea of death and eternity we shall leave 
ourselves behind ourselves at the bottom of the sea, and 
escape through the engulfing torrents from ourselves, and 
be taken into a lifeboat on the surface of the eternal ocean 
and saved. Now, the trouble with that precious theory, 
my friends, is in the nature of things. We are the Cum- 
berland, and the Cumberland cannot swim out of the Cum- 
berland, can it ? While you exist you will have to keep 
company with yourself, will you not ? Is there any doubt 
about that ? " So long as our existence continues it will 
be necessary for us to keep company with the plan of our 
own nature. We cannot flee from ourselves. Divorce is 
common these days ; it is one of the Oklahoma booms, 
but there is no court in the universe that can divorce a 
man from himself, his conscience, and his record. We 
must stay with ourselves. When we go hence our full in- 
dividuality goes. The Cumberland cannot swim out of 
the Cumberla?id. More, the Cumberland cannot escape 
from the water in which it floats. A shallow bottom will 
always bring it to a standstill, for it cannot ride on sand. 
Though the Merrimac chase it with iron hail, the Cumber- 
land cannot flee from itself, and once in the sand, cannot 
flee further from the Merrimac. So man cannot flee from 
the Omniscient and the Omnipotent. It is impossible to 
flee from One who is everywhere; as the Latin proverb 
puts it, "If you wish to flee from God, flee to God." 
You cannot escape from God; his omnipresence bursts 
upon you everywhere. As I write I look from my study 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 239 

windows to find the Empire State's loftiest mountain 
peaks enswathed in cloud ; Marcy, Mclntyre, and Colden 
have each a coronal of splendor, and I doubt not that, if I 
could see old Whiteface, it would also glory in a crown, 
for the setting sun is throwing out its long rays, and every 
tiniest particle of the uplifted water entraps a sunbeam, and 
all the gathered clouds are shot through with glory. So 
is the whole wide world shot through with the omniscience 
of the Eternal, and men, as the water particles, may prove 
themselves traps to catch its splendor and so glorify hu- 
manity that the entire race will appear glistering and 
transfigured with the majestic presence of the Supreme. 
" There is no sedge in the seething white and green below 
the terrible majesty of Niagara, that is so boiled full of 
water as we all shall be and are with God's presence, 
whether we feel it or not. Undoubtedly the dull surge in 
the foam knows little of the sublimity of Niagara, and so 
we, tossed to and fro in natural law, know little of the 
awesome depth and height below us and above us; but 
the day will come when we shall know, for we are to be 
filled, as never was a floating seaweed with the ocean, 
with God." He is and will be our environment as cer- 
tainly as our own nature shall be its own environment. 
" Faculties touch faculties, and, as I may say when I clasp 
my hands, one hand is the environment of the other. So 
I may say, when my faculties interact, that one faculty is 
an environment of the faculty that stands next to it. So 
I call our own individualities a part of our own environ- 
ment." 

Now we may advance a step. The past is unchange- 
able. There are some things that are impossible to Omnip- 
otence. Having been born, it is impossible, even, to 
omnipotence to make it true that I was born in New Eng- 
land if I was born in New York. Your past is full of 

things that chill you with their horror. Omnipotence can- 
16 



240 The Eternal Building. 

not make it true that those things have never been done. In 
the nature of things it must be forever true that a thing 
once done has been done. You may cut off the head of 
Charles I, but Omnipotence cannot make it true that 
Charles I was never a king. Napoleon may be exiled to 
St. Helena, but Allied Europe or Omnipotence cannot 
wipe out the events of the Hundred Days. In the nature 
of things this must be so, and the nature of things is but 
another name for God's nature. Whatever our past has 
been our past remains; our conscience must face it, God 
must face it, and with it we must face God. 

Some may be trembling lest we are using our brains be- 
yond their limit when we assert that we cannot escape from 
our own nature, or from our record, or from God. You will 
grant that this is true in this life, but you may fear that 
we have no right to assert that the same will hold true in 
the life beyond. Let us halt, then, a little to prove that 
this is not conjecture, but truth gained by the use of the 
most approved scientific methods. 

Law is universal. This many thinkers have declared to 
be the greatest discovery of our age. But what do we 
mean when we say that law is universal ? We mean that 
when we have found out what a law of nature is here we 
have found a law of nature that is binding everywhere else 
in this stellar universe. If you know the truth about 
gravitation here, you know the truth about gravitation in 
the sun or moon and in all the suns of the universe. If 
your text-book is good here, it is good among the sons of 
Ursa Major or among those of the Little Dipper, for which 
you hunt so often. Professor Barnard, who has increased 
our wonder concerning the Milky Way by his statement 
that it includes more than five hundred million suns, hav- 
ing learned here the laws of light, could pass to any one of 
those hundred million flaming orbs and find his knowledge 
commanding there. Dana, the great scientist of New 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 241 

Haven, well-nigh overwhelmed with the sublimity of this 
thought, declared that "our earth, although an atom in 
immensity, is immensity itself in its revelations of truth." 
If light here is the opposite of darkness, if it moves in 
straight lines, these attributes are just as true of light on 
the North Star or in the Pleiades. If certain rays of light 
can be made to penetrate solid substances and photograph 
things encased in that substance here on earth, light can 
do the same in all the worlds that fill the jeweled belt of 
Orion. Aye, we need not be amazed if among the sur- 
prises that await us beyond the grave we find photographs 
in Sirius, or Aldebaran, or Argol of scenes in which we 
now participate, taken by rays of light that penetrate the 
endless ether. If I can ascertain what is law here, I have 
a right to march out on its broad curve and declare that 
in all other worlds that same law prevails. What is true 
of physical law we have a right to regard as equally true 
of the equally tangible moral law, for moral law is as much 
a natural law as the law of gravitation. If we learn the 
sweep of a moral law here, we can march to its music up 
to all the worlds in this sun-clustered universe and declare 
that the same law holds there. Just this was the sublime 
audacity the Son of Mary exhibited in the parables which 
earned him the praise of speaking as never man spake be- 
fore. From the sheepfold, lily pond, seed-sowing, cake- 
baking, bottle-mending, " he drew illustrations of moral 
principles the range of which he swept through the uni- 
verse, and by which he explained not only our present 
existence, but the world that is to come. He assumed 
everywhere the unity of the moral law. " 

Therefore we do not go too far when we assert that no 
man can have peace here unless he is at peace with his 
environment — that is, his conscience, his past record, and 
God. We find, also, that because law is universal, and 
moral law as much so as physical law, we have warrant for 



242 The Eternal Building. 

believing that as a text-book on light that is worth some- 
thing here is worth something in the million suns of the 
Milky Way, so a text-book on moral law that is worth 
something here is worth something everywhere else in the 
moral universe, heaven included. Therefore, if a man 
cannot be at peace with himself here unless he is in har- 
mony with his conscience, his past record, and God, he 
could not be at peace in the sun, or in Orion, or in Mazza- 
roth, or in the Pleiades, or in heaven unless he is in har- 
mony with these. 

Now we are prepared to push our way up another 
round of reason's ladder. By the use of the scientific 
method it is now possible to affirm that harmonization 
with conscience, our past record, and God are the unal- 
terable natural conditions by which we may gain peace of 
soul. This may startle some of you. Natural conditions 
for salvation ? Aye, just that, and as indubitable as those 
revealed in the Christian's Bible. This is what makes life 
so serious a thing, for even in the very nature of things 
there are presented to us the conditions of salvation. If 
you are at war with salvation, you are at war with the na- 
ture of things. Now, how shall you gain peace ? Shall 
you conform to the nature of things, and thus end the war 
and make peace, or do you imagine that the nature of 
things will conform to you ? Do you not see that it is you 
who must change ? God cannot be present to warm with 
his love without being present, also, as a consuming fire. 
Philosophy has a few strings to its harp like these; there 
cannot be an upper without there being an under; there 
cannot be a before without there being an after; there can- 
not be a right without there being a left; there cannot be 
a here without there being a there. These propositions 
are incontrovertible, but "they have applications to in- 
terests of ours deeper than the immensities and more en- 
during than the eternities. If the nature of things is 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 243 

against us, God is against us. The nature of things is 
only another name for the total outcome of the Divine 
perfections. He cannot deny himself. He is the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever. And the nature of things 
is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. It has no 
variableness or shadow of turning. With him is no varia- 
bleness or shadow of turning. It is he." Are you in har- 
mony with him ? Are you in harmony with the nature 
of things ? If in the presence of the nature of things 
you realize that you need a change, so you must realize 
that you need a change when you face the presence of 
God. 

Here, had we not earlier called your attention to proofs 
for the existence of a personal God, we might halt to do 
so. Now we have only to step on with this truth full in 
our eyes to face the meaning of the expression, God cannot 
deny himself. He cannot, for your benefit or mine, turn 
his back on the universal laws by which he rules, nor dare 
he wink at their violation. He cannot erase the difference 
between right and wrong, or make wrong right. Grasp, 
now, squarely the truth of Mr. Cook's great affirmation, 
that " God is the nature of things," and you must at once 
grant that the nature of things is perfect. You dare not 
deny that, and you feel that if you are to have peace, you 
must be in harmony with the nature of things. How is 
such harmony possible ? Only by submission. The na- 
ture of things offers no elective methods for the gaining 
of peace. Its one note is submission. Here is the natural 
altar at which you must bow for salvation. What is salva- 
tion ? " Permanent deliverance from both the love and 
the guilt of sin. The love of sin ? Why, I ought not to be 
at peace if I have that. The guilt of sin ? If I have that, 
I ought not to be at peace with the universe. But ' ought ' 
has God in it. Until a man gets rid of both the love of 
sin and the guilt of sin he cannot be at peace with the 



244 The Eternal Building. 

nature of things. Without perfect freedom from the love 
of sin and perfect freedom from the guilt of it a man can- 
not be at peace in a universe managed as it ought to be, 
and this universe is managed as it ought to be, and it 
will be for some time hence." 

The plan of any mechanism may be ascertained by dis- 
covering how it can be operated with the least friction. 
This rule holds true of the soul. If we can find a way of 
soul operation — living — that is frictionless or nearly so, that 
gives peace with its joys and comforts and glad welcoming 
of the future, we have found the plan according to which 
the soul should operate — live. I stand on my feet and, 
bending forward, touch my fingers to my toes. I do it with 
ease. But if I attempt to bend backward and touch my 
fingers to my heels, I do so at the price of a broken back. 
Now, having tried these two methods of using my back 
and knowing their results, I need no treatises, either in 
anatomy or philosophy, to prove to me that my back was 
not planned to bend backward, but to bend forward, and 
if any such treatise should attempt to prove to me the con- 
trary, I would throw it aside as senseless, for it is not rea- 
sonable to suppose that my backbone was made in such a 
manner that its natural action would work its destruc- 
tion. 

Now, this is just the rule that we may apply to find the 
natural action of the soul. Here is a loom. I know 
nothing about its plan or working, but I determine to 
know. Yet as I strive to work it I crush a wheel here 
and a bearing there, and to end my destructive effort a 
servant of the maker, who is in love with the machine, 
comes to tell me that he has written a book telling how 
to operate the machine to best advantage. But I answer 
I will not have the book. He is a partisan. I want none 
of his wisdom. I will hoe my own row. And slowly and 
clumsily I toil on, and at last the loom moves a little 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 245 

more smoothly, and I get a bolt of cloth from it that I dare 
put before the eyes of other men, and by continuing my 
mastery of the loom I command the markets of the 
world. I have found out how it works, and am profited 
thereby. Just so I may learn the frictionless way to operate 
a human soul. I could learn more easily and with less 
blunting of many of its fine powers if I would take the 
Book which the servant of the Maker of the soul brings 
to me for my instruction, but if I am so short-sighted as 
to consider him a partisan, and so obdurate as to refuse 
to give attention to the Maker's counsel, I may still toil 
on, and by the slower and somewhat destructive method 
of induction learn the secret of its frictionless operation. 
But if you follow this latter method, you must not shut your 
eyes to the fact that your method is somewhat destruc- 
tive of the very knowledge which you desire to gain. If you 
destroy a wheel here and jog off a cog there, stretch a 
spring and loosen a bolt, or many of them, you have no 
right to suppose that the product you get from a machine 
that has been partially ruined by your own experiments is 
a fair sample of what that machine would have produced, 
in its perfection. Even so, as we now seek to learn what 
constitutes the frictionless action of the human soul, we 
have a right to study the soul at its best, and not one 
partially destroyed. As the loom that has been partially 
ruined by experiments cannot produce a fair sample of 
what a loom can do, so a man who has crushed many of 
the finer instincts of his nature cannot be considered a 
fair sample of human nature. 

"It is unreasonable and unscientific to judge of the 
possibilities of man by the one-sided, half-hearted, wild- 
willed, unsacrificing individuals about us or that we know 
ourselves to be. 'There is,' said Coleridge, 'some beast 
and some devil in man. So is there some angel and some 
God in man.' If you would know the coming man who will 



246 The Eternal Building. 

do the will of God and work the works of God, you must 
picture the man in whom the angel has conquered the 
beast, God cast out the devil, and who stands full-orbed 
to all the winds of hell and heaven majestic in his Christ- 
liness. Would you put in the cabinet of your faith a man? 
Then you must construct him as a scientist does the speci- 
men of perfect flower, grain, or beast; he builds for en- 
trance to his cabinet of nature at her best. He will not 
accept as the full measure of the splendor of the rose the 
beauty of this one or that; but by utmost diligence to get 
the best from many gardens, and accepting only the gems 
of each, he will construct the best of them all into the per- 
fect rose which each might have become. So would we 
build our ideal man, mindful that in him good and evil 
lie very close together, virtues and vices alternating for 
control, but that even in the worst some good remains, as 
the sensitiveness to poetry and music in the heart of Nero 
and the worshiping love of flowers in the breasts of human- 
sacrifice-offering Tlascalans; yet in the good the expulsive 
power of their love of holiness drives evil from its throne, 
and its remains are brought under the subjection of the 
mind that is stayed on Christ. 

"Then let us build a man ; for material, those who, for 
good or ill, have been the greatest of the race. From 
Greece take Aristides ; from England, Hampden ; from 
America, Washington ; and from all lands those most like 
them, to give our creation a lofty attribute of justice. 
Enter into him the minds of such as Aristotle, Bacon, 
Kant, Hamilton, McCosh, and Cook, that his brain lack 
not for logic. Build in him Isaiah and Ezekiel, Fenelon 
and Bossuet, Bunyan and Milton, Dante and Beecher, that 
his imagination may ride at ease in earth or hell or heaven. 
Give him the commanding genius and strategic grasp of 
the Grants and Napoleons and Hannibals and Caesars and 
Alexanders. Let Peabody of New England and Bright of 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 247 

old England be found in him as representatives of busi- 
ness ability and commercial integrity. Let Beethoven and 
Bach, Haydn and Handel, Mozart and Mendelssohn, fill 
his soul with melody; David and Homer, Whittier and 
Tennyson, the Brownings and the Careys, store his mind 
with poetry; the Baptist and Bushnell, Paul and Punshon, 
Stephen and Simpson, fire his tongue with eloquence ; the 
Maccabees and William of Orange, the Pilgrims and 
Patrick Henry, master him for freedom. Let the blood 
of Gordon and Livingstone, of Chrysostom and Polycarp, 
of Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale, throb in his 
heart the full tide of sacrificing love. Give him the ten- 
derness of Lincoln and Spurgeon, of John the Divine and 
the mothers of the race, crowning all with the conscience 
of the martyrs and prophets and apostles. Now we have 
the upper zones of our full-orbed man well formed, but he 
is not complete. There are lower zones, and we will fill 
them. Having put into the highest zones all these noblest 
traits of character that the race affords, we dare to enter 
in the lower zones the greatest growths of human wicked- 
ness that the race has produced. Resurrect the Pharaohs 
and Herods, the Neros and De Medicis of the human 
family, and put them in this ideal man. They will but 
give exercise for the strength and skill of the powers 
within his upper zones. By the taming and training of 
them he will prove himself. A man can stand grit in his 
boots if he has God in his soul. He can master the tem- 
pests of passion if he possesses the Niagara of grace." * 

Now let this full-orbed man stand before you. Look at 
him well. Think you such a man would stoop to the 
gutter ? Would such a man contentedly grovel in the 
slime of self ? Could such a man be at peace with himself 
while defiantly crying, "I will not," to the still, small 
voice as constantly whispering, "I ought ? " Could such 

* Lemmon, Better Things for Sons of God. 



248 The Eternal Building. 

a man harmonize himself with his conscience unless his 
conscience — educated and refined — spake so that the stars 
could hear, "All is well; thou needst not longer blush," 
unless his past record phonographed its story to his lis- 
tening ears, and repeatedly proclaimed, "All is well; the 
page is clean — no thought nor word nor look nor deed 
nor thing undone remains recorded here but what is 
well? " Could such a man have peace unless from out the 
eternal splendors there came a voice, resonant with ac- 
cents of divinity, exclaiming, while listening millions heard, 
"It is well; thou art my son, in whom I am well 
pleased?" You know he would not; and the way you 
find that such a full-orbed soul would live is the way that 
every soul would live. You have found a sample of decent 
human nature, and learned its frictionless way of operation. 

One of the laws of our republic is that no State has the 
right to go to war without the consent of all the States. 
In the republic of our faculties this same law prevails. 
Vice is a declaration of war, a secession by some one or 
more of the faculties of our nature. But vice will never 
win the vote of reason and conscience. The republic of 
the faculties will never vote to legalize vice or legitimize 
secession — so that vice in man's nature forever remains a 
secessionist. Vice is treachery to the soul, and as such 
the soul of man must fight it, and can never enjoy peace 
until the traitor is conquered and meets a traitor's doom. 
If the republic is to have peace, the faculties must operate 
in harmony — they must act aright; and when they act 
aright they act without friction ; and the frictionless way 
of acting is the best way, and as in this case the acting is 
the living, it is thus scientifically proved that there is a 
best way to live, and if there is a best way to live, it cer- 
tainly must be best to live the best way. 

Some of you have perhaps thought if you threw away 
your Bible, all religion would go with it. That you had only 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 249 

to get rid of the book, and you would be rid of God and 
the requirements of the moral law. But you cannot get 
away from yourself and your environment with a kick and 
a jibe at that blessed old book. I am writing from the 
heart of the Adirondack wilderness. Its hundred lakes 
and thousand purling streams and massive, towering peaks 
stretched themselves beneath my feet two weeks ago as I 
stood on Whiteface's rugged top. Would this vast sani- 
tarium of Nature's kind provision cease to be if all the 
maps of it were lost or burned ? You may throw away 
all your guide-books, but these mountains cannot be 
thrown away. So you may throw away your Bible, but 
the religion of the nature of things will remain so long as 
law is universal and so long as it can be proved that the 
frictionless action of the human faculties is the only natu- 
ral action, thus proclaiming it to be the best way to live. 
Revelation, young thinker, is only the rising of the sun 
upon the landscape that brings out more vividly its beau- 
ties and grandeur. It simply reveals, uncovers; it does 
not create. The truth was before it was revealed. There 
was religion in the nature of things before Moses or the 
author of Job took up pen to proclaim to us God's idea 
and purpose in the nature of things. 

One of the troublesome questions that face every young 
life, and, indeed, many older ones, is that concerning the 
value of morality. It may justly receive attention here. 
If your faculties act as they are meant to act, they will 
give you no pain or torment. Undoubtedly it is at first 
painful for a man to constrain himself to virtuous action, 
but fundamentally the religious man is a happy man be- 
cause his faculties are acting right out of his love for the 
right. He does the right because he is in love with the 
right and not for fear of the consequences that might 
follow wrongdoing, or because of the respectability that 
right living gives him. 



250 The Eternal Building. 

" Your man of morality is the person who sails past the 
Isle of the Sirens and does not land, but he rather wants 
to do so. You remember that the ancients had a story 
about the Golden Fleece, and that once Ulysses went in 
search of the costly object, and on his voyage passed the 
Isle of the Sirens. They sang to him, and in order to 
keep his crew from being enchanted he filled their ears 
with wax and bound himself to the mast with knotted 
thongs; in that way he went by safely. But he rather 
wanted to land, and so was not at peace. Of course, if a 
man wants to land, and will not let himself land, there is 
a conflict in his nature, and mere cold prudence does not 
give him harmonization with his environment. The an- 
cients said that when Orpheus went by that island he, 
being, as you remember, a great musician, set up better 
music than that of the sirens and so enchanted his crew 
that they went by disdaining the sorcerers' shore. They 
not only passed safely, but victoriously and at peace. 
Now, the man of morality is Ulysses, bound to the mast 
with knotted thongs and his ears stopped with wax, cold 
prudence taking him by; but he rather wants to land. 
Orpheus is the man of religion. He has heard a better 
music which has outsung the sirens, and he goes by not 
only with safety, but with disdain. That is the distinction 
between harmonization with our environment and forced 
action in some sort of prudential conformity to moral law. 
No morality can give us peace. When you define morality 
as Ulysses, with his ears filled with wax and his arms 
bound to the masts, and yet some desire existing in his 
heart, to land, that desire must be taken away from his 
heart or he cannot be at peace. When he desires to do 
what he cannot do there is a collision among his faculties, 
and he is not harmonized with the environment of faculty 
upon faculty. That is as evident as that a thing cannot 
be here and there at the same time and in the same sense. 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 251 

We therefore know scientifically that no mere morality, in 
this sense of prudential self-control — mere cool selfishness 
— is enough to give peace, but that religion, in the sense 
of love of what God loves and hate of what God hates, is 
necessary to our harmonization with our environment. 
Why, I confess that when I think of these matters in the 
solitude of my chamber there is nothing in mathematics 
clearer to me than that while I love what God hates and 
hate what God loves it is ill with me, and will continue to 
be ill until the dissonance ceases. In the very nature of 
things I must love what he loves and hate what he hates, 
and not merely conform outwardly to him. Religion is 
the obedience of delight and not the obedience of slavish- 
ness. I must give my heart to the nature of things or it 
and I are at war; and it is He." 

Mr. Cook tells us that one day he stood in the basement 
of the Louvre, enraptured in the contemplation of the su- 
perb Venus de Milo and Angelo's marble creation of the 
sleeping Grecian slave. While he stood there he asked a 
young man who had been scorched by some of the tempta- 
tions of Paris life if that woman and that man now before 
them in marble were dressed in the wardrobe of modern 
fashion and sent out to go the round of the world, would 
they come back dissipated. "They would come back 
without the smell of fire on their garments. " " How do you 
know ? " ' ' Look at them ! " he cried, ' ' they are too great to 
be tempted. " "But," said Mr. Cook, "they are to go around 
the world; they are to be free from family police, and 
they are to be subjected to all the temptations of modern 
luxury and poverty ? " " They would come back without a 
thread of their wardrobe singed." " How do you know ? " 
"Why, look at them, they are too great to stoop! " 

That is the power of the full-orbed man. He is too 
great to stoop ! The whole make-up of such a man resents 
the gutter and refuses to grovel in it. "I affirm that any 



252 The Eternal Building. 

man who will not make a flat-headed Indian of himself, 
who will not bind upon his upper faculties some plank of 
evil habits and press down the better instincts of his 
nature year after year, and who will cultivate all the moral 
part of his nature as sedulously as he does his intellectual 
or executive faculties, or his social or his animal, and 
who will let all parts of his nature grow north, south, east, 
and west — I affirm that such a man, when the breezes 
of the holy Somewhat and Some One who is in nature 
breathed through him, will utter a resonance not like the 
hiss of the reptile, not like the bellowing of the hollow- 
voiced calf, or the notes of the silly-throated goose ; 
there will be in that man, when God moves through his 
full growth, a sacred and commanding resonance like that 
of the forests of oaks on your prairies yonder, like that of 
your * forests combining their tones with the roar of your 
Niagara yonder, like that of both those anthems conjoined 
with the eternal song of the sea, a hallelujah to the glory 
of organizing and redemptive moral law; and it is He." 

You will remember that there is a passage in that Bible 
which we have closed which declares that " man must be 
born from above;" that "the natural mind is at enmity 
with God; is not subject to the law of God, neither, in- 
deed, can be. " Now, I do not quote this Scripture to draw 
an argument therefrom, but to let you see that what is 
there declared by revelation is just what we have found to 
be necessary in the nature of things. Man must be so 
changed as that he shall love what God loves and hate 
what God hates, and he can have no peace until this 
change is accomplished in his life. This is the way the 
nature of things takes to declare that "Ye must be born 
again." Ah, you see, that old book has a marvelous bit 
of sense in it after all. 

The way the full-orbed man would live we admit to be 

* Mr. Cook was lecturing at Chautauqua. 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 253 

the best way to live, and we determine that so we will live 
ourselves. What, then — are we at peace ? No. The 
tongues of ten thousand past words and thoughts and 
deeds and omissions ring the answer in our ears. Even 
though we have acquired similarity of feeling with God, 
so that with all the power of the republic of our faculties 
we do love what God loves and hate what God hates, the 
unchangeable record of our past remains to taunt us with 
its nightly dreams of horrors. We realize amid these ter- 
rors that, if we are to have peace, we must be saved not 
only from the love of sin, but that we must be saved, also, 
from the guilt of sin, for that guilt hangs on our souls as 
his many murders on the soul of Richard. "Conscience 
is a thousand swords! " cried he, and right well we know 
he voiced the truth. Conscience, in the absence of expia- 
tion, forebodes punishment, and where there is fear there 
is no peace ; therefore, if we are to enjoy the peace which 
our acquired similarity of feeling with God brings to us, 
something more is necessary than our reformation and 
continued right living. Some provision must be made by 
which in the nature of things we can be so harmonized with 
our past record that we shall dare look it in the face, and 
as God, who is the nature of things, has provided all else 
necessary for our full-orbed life, it becomes reasonably in- 
ferable that he will provide this. More, if as we stand 
thus at the top of our ladder of self-evident truth we find 
that for lack of this provision we are to land nowhere — 
like the stairway that starts from the marble roof of Milan 
Cathedral and ends in vacancy without a landing — if 
after all our climbing, in which we have been approaching 
nearer and nearer to an eternal full-orbed life, we are to 
remain forever out of harmony with the nature of things, 
in dissonance with God, and without peace with ourselves, 
no matter how deeply we are desirous of harmony with 
this environment, it becomes scientifically inferable that 



254 The Eternal Building. 

such provision will be made as shall harmonize us with our 
whole environment, which includes our conscience and our 
past record. Thus we find that even as the nature of 
things leads us to the necessity of the new birth, so it 
scientifically leads us to the necessity of the atonement. 

In this matter of our past record we are dealing with 
something very tangible. The facts of this record have a 
stare that no stubbornness will outlook. These facts speak 
so clearly that we cannot fail to hear, and as the record is 
read out our conscience rings its " Right" or "Wrong" 
with such sharpness that we tremble. Reason has no diffi- 
culty here in discovering the truth. We cannot cudgel it 
into believing that when we have reformed we have got 
rid of the past. Its unchangeable record remains. The 
past cannot be reformed. Though I have learned to hate 
my sin, still my sin remains. I may cry with my Lady 
Macbeth, "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" but it will 
not out, and while it is there in all its hideousness I feel 
sure that I ought not to treat it as if it were not there. A 
soldier has deserted. On the eve of a battle he has 
skulked away, but his comrade stayed and faced the foe. 
By and by the deserter returns, and is ready to re-enlist. 
Ought he to be treated just like that soldier who stood to his 
duty and looked death in the eyes ? No present or future 
courage or devotion can change the fact that that soldier 
did desert, can it ? I am a deserter. I have failed again 
and again to answer the roll when God and my conscience 
called me to duty, and no act of reenlistment can change 
the record. In a universe governed as it ought to be 
governed I know that I should be treated differently than 
Gabriel and the angels, who have never deserted. This my 
reason and my conscience firmly grasp. Just as firmly, 
too, do I realize that this universe is governed as it ought 
to be governed, and because it is so I quake and tremble. 
My soul knows no rest, even after I have reformed. There 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 255 

is my record; it is red, and because it is red my soul has 
no peace. This is no new thought. All the ages have 
been dolorous with its woe. When we ask the saints and 
sages as well as the fiends and furies of all past history, 
their answer is the same ; in the face of their past record 
in the absence of expiation they have so foreboded punish- 
ment as to destroy all their peace. When the Greek 
philosophy was at its height Socrates declared this in words 
that may be shortened thus, "It maybe that God may 
forgive willful sin; I do not see how he can, for I do not 
see that he ought to." That conviction of punishment 
due to the past record was the cause of all those sacrifi- 
cial holocausts by which the heathen tribes sought to gain 
peace of soul. Conscience is the same in all ages. It is 
nature's goad to-day; it has been nature's goad in all the 
ages past. Face to face with the past record conscience 
has always stung the soul into unrest and horror. 

There is Richard, frenzied on Bosworth field, as ghost 
on ghost of his murdered dead rises to sit heavy on his 
soul. There is Denmark's king, vainly seeking to bow his 
poltroon knees, but Hamlet's father does not resume his 
crown. The murdered become not unmurdered, and 
though the murderer's knees refuse to bend, his conscience 
ceases not to sting. There is Clarence, "false, fleeting, 
perjured Clarence," on whom the fiends of dreams do 
seize, and so rack and rend him with their torments that 
when at their imagined hideous cries he wakes he cannot 
for a season believe but that he has been in hell. There 
is Valjean — Hugo's master limning — whose conscience 
gives him rest day nor night until he makes that great 
confession that can scarce be believed, and that sends him 
from benevolent opulence back to galley ships, with the 
iron chains about his feet. 

Ah! but you say that is poetry; that is fiction. Well, 

let us look history in the eye. John Randolph fought 
17 



256 The Eternal Building. 

a duel with Henry Clay. Later, when death was loosing 
the silver cord, he staggered in his weakness to his seat in 
the Senate chamber. Clay rises to speak. For many 
months these men have not addressed each other. "Lift 
me up," said Randolph, loud enough for Clay to hear; "I 
must listen to that voice once more." He was lifted up. 
He heard; and as Clay finished the two statesmen shook 
hands and parted friends. Soon Randolph was on his 
dying bed, and he asked his physician to show him the 
word "remorse" in the dictionary. "There is no dic- 
tionary in the room," said the physician. "Very well; 
here is a card. The name of John Randolph is on one 
side of it; write on the other the word which best sym- 
bolizes his soul. Write ' remorse ' in large letters ; under- 
score the word! " After that was done Randolph held up 
the card before his eyes, and repeated again and again 
that word, "Remorse, remorse, remorse!" "What shall 
we do with the card?" asked the physician. "Put it in 
your pocket, and when I am dead look at it." This man 
was not insane. It was after this incident that he dictated 
his will, manumitting his slaves. He proved the clear- 
ness of his brain at that hour by dictating a document that 
was technically perfect. Later he said : "You know noth- 
ing of remorse. I hope I have looked to Almighty God as 
a Saviour, and obtained some relief; but when I am dead 
look at the word which utters the inmost of my soul, and 
you will understand of what human nature is capable." 

Look at Charles IX of France. He listened to the 
voice of his mother, and consented to the horror of St. 
Bartholomew. The souls of those thousands slain sit 
heavy on his soul. At twenty-four years of age he is 
stretched upon his dying bed. The blood of that mas- 
sacred host forms a sea on which his conscience forever 
sails him. He cannot escape it. In vain he chases his 
mother from his side. In vain he curses her for giving 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 257 

him birth, and then curses himself for having listened to 
her fiendish plans. In the horrible agonies of his terrors 
the blood starts through the pores of his skin. It pours 
from his nostrils and from the corners of his eyes and from 
his ears, and bursts from the corrugated veins. This is 
history, substantiated by" documentary evidence. There 
is no poetry in it. It is Richard and Clarence and Val- 
jean and Macbeth in the real. His conscience stung and 
stung, and wrung from his lips the cry: " How many mur- 
ders! What rivers of blood! " Here is just such a one as 
fits the picture drawn by Byron: 

The mind that broods o'er guilty woes 

Is like the scorpion girt by fire: 
In circle, narrowing as it glows, 
That flames around their captive close ; 
Till, inly scorched by thousand throes, 

And inly maddened in her ire, 
One and sole relief she knows — 
The sting she nourished for her foes, 
Whose venom never yet was vain, 
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain, 
She darts into her desperate brain. 
So do the dark in soul expire, 
Or live like scorpion girt by fire. 
So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, 
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven ; 
Darkness above, despair beneath, 
Around it flame, within it death. 

Charles did not dare to commit suicide. He had shed 
blood enough without adding thereto his own. So in the 
dark his life passed out. Priests might soak him in the oil 
of extreme unction, praying cardinals might kneel beside 
his writhing form, popes might send pontifical absolutions 
and benedictions, but the past would not out. Its horror 
grew as he drew nearer to the unseen. There is nothing 
that can be demonstrated from the facts of our life if it is 
not demonstrated by the universal experience of the race 
that the past is a destroyer of peace when we look at it 
from ourselves, with no expiational provision between us 



258 The Eternal Building. 

and its appalling record. Unless God in some way which 
only omnipotent wisdom could devise lets down a screen 
between me and my past, so that as I look on it I see 
even its fires spelling a hope-inspiring Fear not, I am lost 
and undone eternally. 

That such a provision has been made reason cannot 
prove. It can only prove the necessity for it. If such 
provision has been made, another voice than that of rea- 
son — namely, revelation — must declare it; reason again 
coming in to consider its adequacy. Has such a revela- 
tion been made ? It is the question that rings up from my 
inmost soul with yearnings that are indescribable. I find 
myself all conscience-tortured like these whose names I 
have called. I find myself awake at night with horrors on 
me such as crazed the mind of Lady Macbeth. She re- 
pented of her connivance at the murder of Duncan. Yet 
her repentance brought no peace. The murder stood, and 
conscience stung. Night after night she rose and paced 
the floor of her chamber vainly rubbing at her hands. At 
the bowl she washed and washed, yet was compelled to 
cry as the blood stains to her eyes remained: "Yet 
here's the spot. What! will these hands never be 
clean again ? " She lifts them to her nostrils, and seems 
stifled by the smell of the imagined blood, and, hor- 
rified, exclaims, " Here's the smell of blood still ; 
all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little 
hand ! " 

Yonder in another room is her husband. His hands are 
also red. His conscience, also, has a thousand tongues to 
condemn him with its outcries. Every noise appalls him. 
Every night is a horror. His hands pluck out his eyes in 
the hideousness of their red terror, and, imagining himself 
seeking to cleanse them in the wide reaches of the sea, he 
realizes that even it is not bowl enough to contain the 
cleansing fluid, and in his anguish cries: 



The Ladder of Self-evident Truth. 259 

" Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
Clean from my hand? No ; this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green — one red." 

I am not a murderer, but the guilt of sin is on my soul. 
The past has its terrors for me that make it easy to un- 
derstand such creatures as these whom the great portrayer 
of the conscience delineated. As much as they I need 
some fount in which to cleanse my red right hand. So 
with Lady Macbeth on one arm and Lord Macbeth on the 
other I with them travel every whither, and with uplifted 
hands cry out to all the world, "Who will cleanse our red 
right hands ? " Religion should give an answer, or religion 
is a mockery; so to the religions of the world I go and put 
my question. 

In the Temple of the Sun I ask Confucius and his 
Analects and all who at his altars pay their vows if they 
can cleanse our three red right hands. But the Analects are 
mute, and what the priests find not there they tell me they 
cannot proclaim, and unlighted and unhelped I must make 
exit from the Temple of the Sun; At Benares I enter the 
Temple of the Hundred Names of God, and all those hun- 
dred eyes that above the names do flame look on me to in- 
crease my terror. To Brahman and Buddhist and to their 
Vedas and Brahmanas and Upanishads and Shastras I put 
my query over again, "Can you cleanse our red right 
hands ? " But the books are silent, and so are the priests 
who read them, and the wealth of Ind has no power to buy 
me release or purchase the cleansing of my hands. At 
Mecca I press my way through reeking filth and stench, 
and even put my lips to the black stone worn smooth by 
the caresses of unnumbered millions of pilgrims, and there 
at the Kaaba I lift my voice above the voices of the priests 
who call to prayer, and to them I put my question: "Can 
you, with your Mecca and your Cairo, your Constantino- 



260 The Eternal Building. 

pie and your St. Sophia, your Koran and your Mohammed, 
can you cleanse our three red right hands ? " Their lips are 
mute, but they lift their hands, and I have my answer, for 
blood in streams flows from them. Fair tresses from the 
heads of gentle women, soft, shining curls from little chil- 
dren, and the dark locks of sturdy men, now all soaked in 
blood, wind about their fingers in sickening spectacle, and 
I know that those who thus gloat in bathing their own 
hands in human blood have no cleansing for my sin- 
stains. 

Is there, then, no cure ? In all this world is there no 
wash that shall make clean these hands of ours ? Must 
we live and die and live again at war with ourselves and 
at war with God, even when from our inmost soul we long 
for peace, and stand ready to pay any price to gain it? 
The whole wide world, outside the book of God and the 
Gospel it proclaims, hears me in silence, and has naught 
but mocking silence for its answer. Come now, O Chris- 
tian, with your book. What does it say ? Open it here 
where all the lights of time and the thousand fires of my 
maddening conscience may light its page. Open it. I 
will hear it now if it has any message that can still these 
furious tongues, if it has any word that will point my way 
to hope. 

And then I read, and stand on Calvary's mount to read, 
of a wondrous sacrificial death, and as beneath that cross 
I stand with crimsoned hands upraised in mute appeal, 
with no voice to ask my question now, nor need to ask it 
either, the hands themselves making more importunate 
plea, lo! there falls from the wounded head and hands 
and feet and riven side of him who dies upon that cross a 
flow of mingled water and of blood upon my sin-stained 
hands, and with an alchemy all divine my hands are 
cleansed; my past remains, but longer stings me not; my 
soul revives; and a peace, in its majesty akin to Him who 



The Great Affirmation. 261 

so majestically faces death, proves that at length I am at 
peace with God and with myself. 

The expiation which the nature of things demanded 
should be provided I have found. It is Christ's atoning 
life and death. Only the Christ which the nature of 
things demands could cleanse my red right hand. 

The Great Affirmation. 
Now, having traveled the long way up this ladder of 
self-evident truth, we are ready to look in the eyes of a 
great affirmation that will be in keeping with the plan of 
the preceding chapters of this book. We have found 
that man has a moral sense — better, a moral nature — but 
that that nature is perverted and needs a cure if man is 
to live the life of a full-orbed soul. We have pressed on 
until that cure was found — a cure for both the love of sin 
and the guilt of sin, such cure being in a new birth and in 
the expiation provided in Jesus Christ. Therefore we 
may affirm that even as we found a wondrous provision 
for the body of man, and for the social nature of man, 
and for the intellectual nature of man, so we have now 
found a wondrous provision for the moral nature of man. 
The redemption provided in Jesus Christ is the provision 
of God for the cure and re-creation of the perverted moral 
nature of ma?i. 

What follows ? You cannot be a man in the full sense 
of that word, you cannot build a character " four-square 
to all the winds that blow," you cannot make of yourself 
what the Eternal would have you, and therefore what you 
have a right to become and what it should be your ambi- 
tion to become, unless you make use of this provision of 
God for your good. Religion is not optional to manhood. 
There can be no complete manhood without union with 
Jesus Christ. Unless your character is upreared in obedi- 
ence to these self-evident laws of your moral nature, you 



262 The Eternal Building. 

are building failure and not success. You are building on 
the sand and not upon the rock. Again, you see self- 
evident truth is but a clumsier way of expressing the 
tersely put teachings of the Holy Book. Read again the 
story of the house built on the sand and of the one built 
upon the rock. That story is true to the nature of things. 
If you have passed it unheeded in your reading, do not 
do so now, as the same message rings out to you from 
the study of the laws of your own being. Without the re- 
ligion of Jesus Christ you cannot fashion yourself aright. 
Accept, then, this great provision of the thought and 
favor of the Eternal for and to you, work it into your life, 
and stand full- orbed and masterful before your God and 
before your fellow-men. 

It takes a soul 
To move a body; it takes a high-souled man 
To move the masses . . . even to a cleaner sty; 
It takes the ideal to blow a hair's breadth off 
The dust of the actual. Ah, your Fouriers failed, 
Because not poets enough to understand 
That life develops from within. 

The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 

It seems but just, as I have said so much concern- 
ing the operation and office of conscience, that I should 
say something more distinctly concerning its nature and 
culture. I confess that I shrink from entering where so 
many have entered but to befog themselves and others, 
especially as what is said must be so much compressed 
and much that might well be said be left unsaid. 

In the minds of many the idea of conscience, reason, 
and the judgment are terribly mixed. Very many seem to 
consider them but different names for the same thing, or 
succeed in getting them sadly blended when they speak 
of their operations. Now, if we can straighten things out 
a bit here, we will be better prepared to march on success- 
fully. Conscience is not the reason; it is not the judg- 



The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 263 

ment, but an original faculty, that, being such, of course 
has a function peculiarly its own. But this does not 
debar it from drawing or putting the other faculties to 
service. Taste, sight, hearing, are each original faculties, 
but they call to their service many or all of the other facul- 
ties. Just so conscience, while it is an original faculty, as 
the power to reason is an original faculty, puts the other 
faculties to its service. 

In what relation to each other do the faculties stand ? 
Let us seek answer to our query. I will try to set before 
you the picture of the operation of the mental and moral 
faculties that has appeared to me. It is a court scene. 
A case in equity is to be tried. There on the bench is 
the judge. His name is Conscience. There is a lawyer 
in his robes. His name is Reason. There is a petti- 
fogger. He wears so many different robes and changes 
his name as often as his robe that I scarce know to-day 
whether he is to be called Desire, or Appetite, or Avarice, 
or Lust, or Compromise. He is not much respected in 
the court, but no frown will keep him out of sight. He 
will be heard, no matter how ranting his speech. On the 
desk in front of the judge and on the table in front of the 
lawyer are books. The pettifogger has some sadly muti- 
lated copies, also, under his arm. They are the law. 
Judge and lawyer and pettifogger each accepts them as 
such, though each may have a different conception of 
their import. Yonder are the litigants. They represent 
the case now to be tried. The trial begins. Remember 
there is no jury. In the republic of the faculties trial by 
jury is not allowed. In the rendering of a decision the 
judge is supreme. 

The trial proceeds. Reason states the case, with many 
deferential apologies for calling the attention of his honor 
to the well-known provisions of the law as well as to fair 
deductions from his honor's former decisions. Reason 



264 The Eternal Building. 

is in love with consistency. The judge is very likely cog- 
nizant of the bearing of every law or decision quoted be- 
fore it is quoted, for it is seldom here, as in the court 
from which we borrow our method of illustration, that the 
lawyer knows more than the judge. But the lawyer has 
his office and its duties. The whole case must be thor- 
oughly discussed, that the judge may be in possession of 
all the facts and his memory jogged as to the bearings of 
the law on the particular point at issue. Then comes the 
pettifogger. He makes his argument. From the same 
facts he may draw quite a different story, and from the 
same law and decisions support the justness of his conten- 
tion. Oftentimes he dare not lift his eyes, for even he is 
ashamed of his case. Sometimes there is a churlish smirk 
upon his face, for he realizes himself the flimsiness of his 
plea. But at other times he straightens up, dares to look 
judge and lawyer in the eyes, and, waxing eloquent, he 
puts a case that makes judge and lawyer wonder what 
this fellow is coming to and if at last he has a case that is 
to win a decision in his favor. The cross-fire of question 
and reply, the incisive queries of the judge, the quick and 
interested rulings on objections, all tell that a battle of 
tremendous interest is on. The lawyer is crowded from 
corner to corner; now with a brilliant sally he routs the 
pettifogger but to find that on the latter's objection his 
honor rules the sally out of court. Now it is the petti- 
fogger who has offered evidence against which the lawyer 
raises objection, and his honor is compelled to hesitate, 
and scratch his head, and scan his notes, and read the law 
a dozen times before he has confidence to rule that the 
objection holds. It is a case where right and wrong seem 
to have got into each other's clothes, and the court has 
looked and decided by the clothes so long that it is hard 
to recognize now by faces. At length the lawyer and 
the pettifogger rest their case. They have exhausted all 



The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 265 

the resources at their command, and sit now in silence, all 
their eyes on the judge. And he ? Usually he speaks as 
quick as the case is rested, but now it is not so. He is 
silent. His eyes are closed, and he seems to be telling on 
his fingers the tally of the laws, and as fingers are opened 
and closed the watchers wonder which side of the silent 
tally is theirs. Then he rises, and paces back and forth, 
thumbing a book here or pouring long over one there. 
Then he sits down again. The light comes into his eyes. 
His lips press each other, and his fingers drum rapidly on 
his desk. Then it comes. What ? Why, the judgment. 
That is how Judgment comes. Conscience itself, knowing 
the law, listens to the opinions and pleadings of Reason 
and Desire, who also know the law, and when they have 
spoken and Conscience has itself considered all the bear- 
ings of the question, perhaps entering into its considera- 
tion principles that have been entirely overlooked both by 
Reason and Desire, it as judge delivers the decision, and 
the decision is the judgment on or of the case. 

I trust that by this illustration, faulty as analogies ever are, 
I have made somewhat more clear to you the processes by 
which we by reason through conscience arrive at judg- 
ment. And as conscience in this process occupies so re- 
sponsible a position, you will, I trust, not fail to realize 
how diligent and thorough you should be in its develop- 
ment and culture. 

But has conscience no feeling ? Certainly the judge has 
feeling. Judge Conscience never decides questions upon 
technicalities, but always perceiving the Tightness and 
wrongness of certain actions or choices, he also feels that 
right ought and that wrong ought not to be carried out by 
the will, and the Will, to continue our court illustration, is 
the sheriff who executes the judgment. 

We have now introduced another word which will, if we 
grasp its meaning, do much to clarify our conception of 



266 The Eternal Building. 

the nature and office of conscience, as well as advance 
our definition of conscience a step higher. It is a word of 
a single syllable. It is the word "ought." But that word 
"ought," as Mr. Cook keenly observes, "has God in it." He 
has found the weight of that word. Let us watch his 
scales : 

"Take the single syllable 'ought' and weigh it, and 
do so according to the sternest rules of the scientific 
method. How are we to ascertain what this word weighs 
unless it be by experiment ? What experiment shall we try 
with it if it be not that of weighing over against it some- 
thing very heavy ? What shall we weigh against that one 
word 'ought?' Here is a soldier with an empty sleeve. 
There was a day when the question arose whether he 
ought to go to the front in the war. He had to maintain 
father and mother; and the word ' home ' is supposed to be 
a very weighty one. Heavier than the word father or 
mother is the word 'wife.' He weighed that word and 
others with it against the one word ' ought;' and father and 
mother and wife went up in the scale, and ' ought ' went 
down, and he went to the front. Is ' ought ' scientifically 
known to weigh anything ? Here is another soldier who 
had father and mother, wife and children to weigh against 
that insignificant syllable; and he weighed them in the 
mornings and the noons — in both the sacred twilights, as 
they say in India — and in the midnights. Father, 
mother, wife, and children were words to which he allowed 
their full weight. He was the only support of his family, 
but the one word ' ought ' again and again carried up the 
weight of these weightiest contradicting syllables. What if 
this soldier and that could have put into the left-hand 
scale all that men value in wealth and honor or reputation ? 
I will not suppose the word honor to have any other mean- 
ing than reputation, for I cannot weigh ' ought ' against 
'ought;' and a man ought to maintain his honor. We must 




WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 



To the voice of his conscience he was true. 

" I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as 
justice. ... I am in earnest ; I will not equivocate ; I will 
not' excuse; I will not retreat a single inch; and I will be 
heard." He was. 



The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 267 

not be so unscientific as to weigh a thing against itself. 
But we put in here, outward standing among men, and 
wealth and life. If you please, sum up the globes as so 
much silver and the suns as so much gold, and cast the 
hosts of heaven, as diamonds on a necklace, into one scale, 
and if there is not in it any part of the word ' ought ' — if 
1 ought ' is absent in the one scale and present in the other — 
up will go the scale laden with a universe, as a crackling 
paper scroll is carried aloft in a conflagration ascending 
toward the stars. Is it not both a curious and appalling 
fact, this weight of the word ' ought '—and yet a fact abso- 
lutely undeniable ? Where is the materialist or the pan- 
theist who dares assert that I am making this syllable too 
heavy ? You may weigh against that word everything but 
God, and it will outweigh all but himself. I cannot 
imagine God weighed against 'ought.' Precisely here is the 
explanation of a mystery. God is in the word ' ought,' and 
therefore it outweighs all but God." * 

Remember, it is conscience that says ' 'ought ;" conscience, 
therefore, has God in it. Conscience is God speaking in 
a man. I like Dr. Trench's study of the word. Con- 
science means not merely that which I know, but that 
which I know with some other. That other knower whom 
the word implies is God. The law that is known to con- 
science is known, also, to God, and conscience knows that 
it is known to God, and performs its duties with the aw- 
ing sense of that knowledge ever present. That child 
whose teacher asked her, " What is conscience ? " and who 
replied, li It is Jesus whispering in our hearts" was not far 
wrong. There may be such a strife of passions and de- 
sires that conscience shall be well-nigh deafened, yet still 
its voice is there, and its voice is the voice of the Eternal 
Truth. 

" Conscience is the true Jacob's ladder, set in the heart 

* Boston Monday Lectures, Conscience. 



268 The Eternal Building. 

of the individual and reaching unto heaven, and upon it 
the angels of self-reproach and self-reproval ascend and 
descend. The capacity for righteousness is the conscious 
possession of the normal man, and the discrimination be- 
tween right and wrong, good and evil, is but the working 
within the spirit of the Infinite Christ. The power of the 
historic Christ to quicken the conscience depends upon the 
essential relation of that organ of the soul to the Eternal 
Christ. The consciousness that there is an ethical mean- 
ing to man's choices and acts; that his career is the sub- 
ject of moral judgment; that the significance of his thought 
and behavior reaches beyond time and space; that his 
being is bound up with the Infinite, is the prof oundest im- 
port of conscience, and it is the whisper within him of the 
word of God." * 

Now, I think, we are prepared for a thought which I 
desired to express when writing of the rendering of a judg- 
ment by the conscience. Conscience, not only knowing 
the law, but it being the whisper of the Lawmaker in the 
soul, the voice of truth among, yet above, the other mental 
and moral faculties, it, to revive our method of illustra- 
tion, in rendering its decision may enunciate principles 
that are entirely new to the reason and the desires, and de- 
cide the case by the application of a rule which neither 
has heard before, yet a rule which, now hearing, reason 
at once apprehends to be entirely reasonable and author- 
itative, and the desires at once understand to be just and 
right. Law is eternal, unchangeable, but the apprehen- 
sion of the import of that law by the conscience is, and of 
right out to be, progressive. The eternal laws change 
not, but they do unfold, and conscience must keep abreast 
of that unfolding. Yesterday's apprehension by the con- 
science of the import of the eternal law will not solve the 
problems that arise to-day, nor will what serves to-day 

* Gordon, The Christ of To-Day. 



The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 269 

meet to-morrow's needs, because before to-morrow comes 
the race shall have marched on to the stadium, where the 
eternal law may unfold its vaster sweep and wider applica- 
tion. The conscience of the patriarchs would not have 
met the needs of the apostles, for the latter had by the 
exercise of their conscience to decide the Tightness and 
wrongness of thoughts and deeds for which neither the 
patriarchs nor their age were ready, and concerning which, 
therefore, the law had not as yet declared its application. 
Nor would the conscience of an apostle, entered just so 
into the life of a man to-day, solve for him all the problems 
that face us. As the progress of the race puts many a 
problem before the civil courts for the solution of which 
no precedents or statutory enactments come to the aid or 
rescue of the judge, so the progress of the race puts many 
a problem to the conscience for which past apprehension 
of the import or application of the law will not suffice; and 
just then that "other One who knows" — the God in the 
word " ought" — whispers or thunders, and the conscience 
proclaims the new-found principle for the guidance of the 
life. But every such enunciation will be so reasonable 
that it will stir up no opposition from the reason, and 
though the desires may not conform to the new rule, they 
will none the less grant its justness. Remember, God is 
in the word "ought." It is he who whispers or thunders 
through the conscience, and he is always reasonable. 

Thus you find that the conscience is a growing thing, 
and it grows only as it hearkens to the voice within and 
secures from all the other faculties obedience to that voice. 
Here we approach another of the difficult problems of this 
discussion. We have called the will the sheriff who exe- 
cutes the judgments pronounced by the conscience. But 
the demonstration of many a life is that the will refuses to 
execute such judgments. Conscience has no power of 
choice. Its function is to declare what should be chosen. 



270 The Eternal Building. 

The power of choice resides in the will. It may or it may 
not choose as conscience decides to be the right. It may 
or it may not elect to execute the judgment pronounced. 
It may choose to lock arms with the pettifogger even after 
he has lost his case, and, snapping its fingers at the lawyer, 
defy the judge, and instead of compelling the litigants to 
obey the law, lead them in their riotous rebellion. This is 
not as it ought to be, but it is as things are in a sad num- 
ber of instances, and, if Mr. Cleveland will allow, it is the 
condition of things, as well as the ought-to-be, that we 
must face. 

When the will refuses obedience to the conscience what 
can the conscience do ? I confess that this is one of the 
most terribly perplexing questions that I have ever turned 
over in my mind. No answer satisfies. The nearest ap- 
proach to such an answer is one that involves a comparison 
of God's treatment of a man who refuses to obey him, and 
the more this is pondered the more it seems evident that 
this contest to which we turned simply for purposes of 
comparison is the actual representation of the situation 
described in our question. The rebellion of the will 
against the conscience is only another way of treating and 
beholding the rebellion of man against God. In con- 
science God speaks, and by the will man chooses; if, then, 
the will refuses to obey the conscience, the man refuses to 
obey God. If this statement of the situation is just, the 
question becomes, If man refuses to obey God, what can 
God do ? I dare not attempt to frame a reply that would 
be so audacious as to place bounds to the limits of Om- 
nipotence. Our answer, if one is to be found, must come 
from observing what God does do in such instances; and 
observation proves that God leaves the man to his choice, 
but never fails to mark his way with warnings that his 
choice is wrong. The pleasures to which the man turns 
may satiate, but they never satisfy. His appetites lead 



The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 271 

him but to shame and physical ill. His passions curse 

and rot him bodily. His intellect may expand, but only 

increases the shame of a Byron and a Burns and a Poe, 

groveling in the slime. Right and left all things prove 

false, and the more he lets the mind that differentiates 

him from the surrounding beasts declare itself the more 

he realizes that all this is just, and terrors take hold upon 

him. He promises himself to reform, but puts off the 

hour of fulfilling his promise with full knowledge, and 

with the sting that such knowledge entails, that his life 

may end before he has reformed. Outwardly to the eyes 

of many it may seem that God pays no attention to him, 

but the man knows otherwise. The rebel always knows 

he is a rebel, and the rebel against God knows that the 

day of his arrest and arraignment before the eternal bar 

is inevitable. So, though he shouts and revels and makes 

light of his course, front him suddenly with death, stretch 

him quickly upon his bed, and he will quake and tremble 

at the speedy prospect of judgment. Though for years 

his ears have been so full of the songs of the siren, and 

his eyes so glutted with visions of vice, and his brain so 

dizzy with fancies infernal that he has well-nigh forgotten 

the fact of his rebellion, it takes only death to stare him 

in the eyes to bring him back to the fact; and, with logic 

that is irresistible, though hell be the conclusion of its 

premise, he sees that all the vice that intervenes is but the 

fruit of that initial error, long past, but still pregnant, 

when he as a man set himself against the knowledge of his 

duty that he had received from God. Thus we see how 

God treats the man who refuses to obey him. He sends 

no legions of angels to force him against his will to the 

discharge of his duty, nor does he take his office from 

him and put him in chains. He lets the rebel live and 

revel in his errors. He lets him continue to choose evil 

until evil becomes almost second nature. He lets the man 
18 



272 The Eternal Building. 

go the length of his life, and then the judgment. And man 
knows the judgment is coming as well as God, and this is 
his continuing terror. 

Is not this but another way of partially describing what 
the conscience does when the will refuses to obey it ? It 
leaves the will to its own waywardness, but ever continues 
its warnings, and again and again holds up pictures of the 
end of all such evil choosing. Here, of course, our com- 
parison ends, for conscience is not all divine, and the re- 
fusal of the will to conform to the course prescribed by the 
conscience must work havoc to the human side of the con- 
science. When the will, taking lessons of Satan, over- 
throws the supreme court of the faculties and establishes 
itself as dictator the doors of the conscience are walled 
up, as the dictatorial mob of 1789 walled up the doors of 
the churches of France. For this is the universal obser- 
vation: the will never rebels or overthrows the conscience 
in the interests of right. Conscience always declares for 
the right. If the will rebels and mounts to the dictator- 
ship, it is in the interests of wrong, and all that is right 
must suffer so long as the rule of the wrong may last. It 
is possible that a rebellious will may not pervert the con- 
science, but it cannot fail to stifle and weaken it with its 
contentions and disorders. So for conscience to grow — 
and it can only grow by the rightful exercise of its func- 
tions — it is necessary that it command the instant and 
complete obedience of the will and all the other faculties. 
No life is directed right that is not directed by conscience, 
and if the directions of the conscience are disobeyed, no 
ingenuity of the reason or stubbornness of will can save 
the life from moral shipwreck; and so long as conscience 
can make itself heard above the din of the storm of the 
heedless revelry that threatens the wreck of the ship of 
life it will warn of danger and direct to the right. 

But you pin me now with the old conundrums: Will 



The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 273 

conscience always lead us right ? Is it an infallible guide ? 
These are the woeful puzzles of moral philosophy. But 
if you will think a while, I believe you will come to see that 
they are such puzzles to us because, so far as we are con- 
cerned, they have so little true relation. The answer that 
may be given to these questions when considered with re- 
lation to their import to the heathen millions is without 
controversy tremendous, but I cannot help thinking that 
it is wild beating of the air for you and me, who make up 
the rank and file of Christendom, to become perplexed 
over them. Our birthright is inestimable, but the inherit- 
ance of this birth has its consequences. We were born 
to the light. From the hour of our birth the light has 
streamed on us with increasing energy as our intelligence 
has developed. Unconsciously, as well as consciously, we 
have gained a consciousness of right and wrong as meas- 
ured by the ideal of right everywhere present in the 
thoughts and life of those about us, so that it becomes 
undeniably true that so far as you and I are concerned 
who are born in Christian lands our conscience will and 
does always direct toward the right. I have no expecta- 
tion that any man's conscience, no matter how zealously 
cultivated, will become absolutely infallible in this life, 
but I as firmly believe that the conscience of every human 
being of sound mind who grows up amid the surroundings 
of our so-called Christian lands will prove sufficiently 
near being infallible to lead him up the heights to the 
Infallible and Ineffable One, with whom he may reside 
eternally. 

It is idle to philosophize ourselves into a muddle. We 
must not perplex ourselves so much about what God is 
going to do for and with the heathen as to overlook what 
God has done for us, and so fail to make the use we 
should of his provision for us, even to the extent, possibly, 
of finding out what he wants to do for the heathen through 



274 The Eternal Building. 

us. We are born to light. So long as our brains remain 
clear we cannot mistake its illumination. Do not mis- 
take a disordered mind for an untrue conscience. Con- 
science must use the mind for its processes and to express 
itself; of course, if that mind is disordered, conscience 
cannot possibly ring true. But where the mind remains 
clear, there conscience will speak for the right, and it is 
not a disordered compass, but a rebellious will, that is 
responsible for a man going far from the path of right in 
these days in Christian lands. The light is all about him; 
he cannot fail to see it unless he shuts his eyes, and his 
eyes will stay open if he wills them to stay open. The 
light is in some measure in him, and it will lead him un- 
less he refuses to be led, and he cannot refuse to be led 
without the operation of his will. Well-nigh the first di- 
rection of the light about us and in us is to get more 
light. It requires us not only to follow what light we 
possess, but to follow all we can obtain, and makes known 
to us that we are responsible for all we can obtain, and if, 
in obedience to these promptings, we keep our life abreast 
of the light which in our conscience we have apprehended, 
our conscience will not fail very soon to be illuminated 
with the full radiance of God. 

I cannot see the fitness of the stock illustration of the 
compass and its getting out of order to the facts of the 
case in a land that is bright with Gospel light. Using this 
illustration, it is asked, What of a man lost in the woods 
whose compass unknown to him has got out of order — can 
it lead him right ? Certainly not ; but even should it 
dawn on him that it is out of order, it being the best thing 
at hand for his guidance because it does point somewhere, 
it had best be followed until, getting out somewhere, he 
may right it. He is not responsible for getting lost, but 
he is responsible for staying lost if use of life and wit 
would have brought him from the woods in safety. If a 



The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 275 

man is lost in the woods without a compass, and meets a 
woodsman who is also lost, but who knows something about 
traveling through the woods, he will be better in the lost 
woodsman's tow than in going it alone. So the man with 
the disordered compass — he had better follow it, though it 
will not bring him out right. But the trouble with this 
illustration in my mind, when I put it to the test of prac- 
tical life, is to find the woods wherein the conscience may get 
lost. In these days of crowded seas the ship whose mag- 
netic needle points wrong is by reason of that very deflec- 
tion from the usual course the more apt to run counter to 
ships whose needles point true, and so soon given opportu- 
nity to correct her reckoning. So with the conscience; the 
Christian world is so full of consciences that point right 
that if your conscience or mine become deranged, we will 
so soon cross course with others that the light we have 
will prove us wrong and conscience will be quick to correct 
the reckoning. There seems to be no woods, scarcely 
any brush, for one determined to find and be guided by 
the light. Having lived for thirty years in the lap of a 
Christian land, and begotten a conscience in measure with 
its conscience, would residence among the most degraded 
tribe of Darkest Africa, with readiness to live like one of 
them, or priesthood in the highest rank of Brahmans, or 
hermitage in the desert wastes of Patagonia, prove a 
woods to my conscience ? I cannot see it so. I admit 
the dwarfing and dimming that would undoubtedly follow, 
but I believe, in every moment of solitude, whenever 
alone under the stars, or in monk's cell, or in hermit's 
cave, my conscience would still speak and, though stifled 
back, would yet ring true. I cannot turn my back on 
these thirty years by any exercise of my conscience; I can 
by the exercise of my will, and for that exercise of my will 
in opposition to the judgment of my conscience my con- 
science would everywhere and forever brand me as a rebel. 



276 The Eternal Building. 

Do not hug yourself, then, young thinker, with the delu- 
sion that you can do wrong and plead for mercy on the 
theory of being lost in the woods. Born to the light, 
nursing it with your mother's milk, even though she be 
not a consecrated child of God, intuitively hiding the ap- 
ple you have taken because you know such taking is 
theft, hearing of the right way from teacher and passer- 
by, even if you never journeyed to the Sunday school or 
listened to a sermon, the church bells have rung in your 
ears from the time that you began to ask, What's that ? 
you have had reply after reply that has made known to 
you for what the Church stands; with all this light about 
you, with this surging, jostling throng rubbing your elbows 
daily on the street, and by the contact of life declaring 
right and wrong, you cannot get lost, your conscience will 
not get out of order unless with your will you strike it such 
a blow as occasions its disorder by knocking it from its 
pivot. And if you will strike this blow, you will know that 
your rebellious will is responsible for your lost condition. 
This light that streams about you conscience steadily 
calls on you to get and by it guide your life. It always 
rings in our ears that it is wrong to suppress light. Day 
by day, though the eye may never have rested on John's 
gospel, it declares "that this is the condemnation, that 
light is come into the world, and men love darkness 
rather than light. " Our conscience, with the education of 
birth and Christian environment, very quickly grasps the 
fact that "the Light which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world " has appeared, and that to follow that 
Light becomes man's supreme duty, for that Light " in 
the beginning was with God, and was God." 

I can understand how the man of Africa or Asia who 
has never heard the story of the redemptive provision for 
man's fallen moral nature may be considered as one lost 
in the woods. It is not for me to say that he is respon- 



The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 277 

sible for being lost. If he is following the best his con- 
science directs, I cannot but think that the call of his con- 
science that impels him to prostrate himself before the 
wheels of Juggernaut to be crushed in the body may be as 
praiseworthy as the call of mine that impels me to pros- 
trate myself before the altar of my Christ. The trouble 
is not so much with his conscience as with the religious 
knowledge to which he was born and which surrounds 
him, and which is thus far all the knowledge his conscience 
has been able to apprehend. If he follows all the light he 
has, we may well leave the results of his case with the 
Lord. But as we see him blindly with pain and torment 
almost vainly seeking after light, we may well question 
within ourselves what weighty judgments await us who, 
having the light, refuse it unto him. Missions are not half 
so much for him as for ourselves, though the change 
wrought in him be so glorious. We must rush to him in 
the woods, for we know that he is lost there, and lead him 
forth, or the penalty of his death shall be upon us. Again, 
you see, we are forced to read with new meaning the words 
of the Holy One, "Go ye." You must heed these words. 
Conscience commands obedience, for conscience is the 
continuing whisper of Jesus in your life. Conscience de- 
mands missions, for conscience realizes that the possession 
of light makes one responsible for the radiation of that 
light. Missions are not to be considered mere creations 
of sentiment, but the love-constrained and conscience-im- 
pelled running of those whose consciences point true to 
Christ after those known to be lost in the woods of sin- 
cursed human nature. 

But if the life of him who is lost in the woods goes out 
while he is struggling blindly through the thick darkness 
and foul morass, if his last utterance be a wail and a groan 
as his eyes strive to pierce the blackness of an appalling 
future, rather than beholding a brightness that gleams 



278 The Eternal Building. 

from the radiant way by heaven revealed, causing a song 
and a smile to come to his lip and face, what then ? We 
must leave him to a juster Judge than man. If he who has 
ended his days in the morass has known nothing all his 
life but the woods and this blind stumbling, the issue must 
be different with him than with that man who stood in 
a world where paths ran straight and compasses were 
true, yet refused to right his own or walk by it when 
righted. 

Perhaps it will be well to say a few words homiletically 
concerning conscience before we close this division. Get 
light, get light, and live by the light. Never for a mo- 
ment forget that you are a sinner, a rebel, even though 
you have the blessed assurance that you are a sinner saved 
by grace, a rebel pardoned. The sin for which you have 
found a Saviour, the rebellion for which you have found 
forgiveness, has left its mark upon your conscience. The 
fierceness of its contest with your rebellious passions and 
desires has strained it. Sin is destructive of the sensibility 
of this heavenly monitor; some measure of its virtue has 
unquestionably gone from it. Get it back or as nearly so 
as you can. How? When the magnetized bar has lost its 
sensitiveness and no longer points as accurately and un- 
hesitatingly as it should they bind it up for a while with 
a stronger and correctly pointing magnet until its lost 
power is restored. Here is your conscience cure. Let 
your conscience be bound up with that of Christ's, and its 
lost sensitiveness to all the currents of right and virtue 
will surely be restored. The safety of a ship depends 
upon the needle's sensitivity, and so does our moral health 
depend upon the sensitivity of our conscience. Keep it, 
then, in sure relation to Christ. Bind yourself to him. If 
you seem to be wandering from him, your life all vacillat- 
ing, get thee to his word. The Bible is a mighty mag- 
netizer, and the conscience that is magnetized by it you 






The Nature and Culture of the Monitor. 279 

should always obey. "Get conscience well informed by 
the word, as you set your watch by the sun — and then be 
ruled by it. Do nothing against conscience. If con- 
science saith, Do such a thing, though never so unpleas- 
ing, set upon the duty. When conscience saith, Take 
heed of such a thing, come not nigh the forbidden fruit. 
Conscience is God's deputy, or proxy, in the soul. The 
voice of conscience is the voice of God. Do not stifle 
any checks of conscience, lest God suffer thee to harden 
in sin."* Another has put this thought in these still 
timely words: " Never pass by or palter with the clear 
voice of conscience, with the plain command of duty; 
never let it be doubtful to your own soul whether you be- 
long to the right side or wrong — whether you are a true 
soldier or a false traitor. Never deliberate about what is 
clearly wrong and try to persuade yourself that it is not. 
Never trifle with the verdict of your own soul and make ex- 
cuses for your sin to yourself, or try to palliate and forget 
what you ought to forsake with hearty contrition. For 
remember that the voice within is the very voice of God, 
and if you play false with that, you are a traitor to the 
Master."! 

In many it almost seems that conscience has been not 
destroyed, but resigned. Dulled and dimmed by failure 
to live in the light, or worn and racked by long contest 
with the other faculties, conscience has just resigned and 
lets the passions rule. Do not thus dethrone yourself. 
Even though the will rebels, still cry out. Do not lament 
that your conscience is dead; it may be terribly silent, but 
it will not die until you die. Stick a needle in a corpse, 
and it will give no sign ; stick a needle in a live man, even 
though a phlegmatic one, and there will be movement. It 
is so with conscience; it may have seemed dead, so com- 
pletely has its voice been hushed, but stick the needle of 

* J. Watson. t John Foster. 



280 The Eternal Building. 

some great moral question into it, and you will find it, very 
much alive. Keep it alive; and to keep it alive you must 
exercise it and feed it. Again and again set it to the holy 
task of perceiving the right, cultivate its fineness of per- 
ception, and show yourself alive to its slightest prompt- 
ings. An Eastern legend very beautifully describes the 
office of conscience. A great magician gave a prince a 
ring — priceless not because of its gold and jewels, but by 
reason of a rare and mystic property in the metal, by which, 
though it rested quietly on the wearer's finger in ordinary 
circumstances, it would contract suddenly and pain him 
whenever he harbored a bad thought or wish or concocted 
an evil plan. The ring of the fable is the conscience of 
truth. Heed its warnings. More correctly, possibly, is the 
conscience illustrated by those delicate instruments of 
modern science whose equilibrium the tiniest hair will 
disturb. Just so delicate is the conscience. Guard it well. 
Protect it in all possible ways, and know that its best pro- 
tection is found within the shadow of the cross. It is said 
that at Gibraltar there is a sentinel whose duty it is to 
stand with torch in hand at the entrance to the tunnel 
that leads out to the " neutral ground." In case of an 
insurrection within the garrison his duty is to apply 
the torch to the trail of powder, and cause an explosion 
that would destroy the tunnel, and so cut off all 
exit. Conscience is just such a sentinel. It is God's 
guard in the soul. For it to go to sleep, to wax 
cold or indifferent, to forsake its post, is to surrender 
the life to the foulest course. But, unlike the sentinel 
at Gibraltar, this guard is not alone. We mount guard 
not only for God, but with God — for God the Holy Ghost 
will stand here within us as constant companion; and so 
long as we mount guard with him our lives will be so 
conscientiously guarded as that they cannot fail of being 
glorious. 



The Problem of Temptation. 281 

The Problem of Temptation. 

Here, though it may not connect at all corners with the 
general outline of this chapter, seems the best place to con- 
sider a problem which must be faced if real, lasting charac- 
ter is to be upreared. It is a problem as old and as uni- 
versal as the race; it is the problem of temptation. A 
Frenchman once boasted that in all the world there was 
but one thing which he could not withstand. His claim, 
of course, was considered remarkable, if not untruthful, 
but all surprise vanished when he declared that that one 
thing was temptation. There is a certain cowardliness 
about this confession that is not to my liking, for no man 
with the breath of God in him should stand up and de- 
clare his continuous defeat because of his inability to with- 
stand temptation, but it is a fact, nevertheless, that those 
who win the most victories in the lifelong contest with Satan, 
those who do often triumph gloriously, do also at times 
suffer the most shameful and humiliating defeats. Tempta- 
tion came to them and tried them beyond their strength to 
endure; smote them between the joints of their armor, 
and saints though they were, they were vanquished for a 
time. Thus we find that no man escapes temptation. 
Every one of us must have one or more personal interviews 
with the devil when alone in the wilderness of life. Like 
Jesus alone in the wilderness, we must tread the wine press 
and win or loose in the face-to-face encounter with the 
prince of darkness. Without temptation met and con- 
quered there is no manhood. The God in the man will 
not march on to glorious achievement until it has 
routed or at least put under subjection the devil in the 
man. 

But you say there isn't any devil any more. The the- 
ology that has a devil in it is worn out. It is a back num- 
ber. There is no place for it in the thought of the age. 



282 The Eternal Building. 

We have got beyond such an uncouth idea as that of a 
demon with horns and tail. There is no place for such a 
monster in the universe fashioned by the Eternal Good. We 
don't believe in any such old bogy. 

Don't you! One almost feels like commiserating you in 
the language of an old English preacher whom a couple of 
smart " Alecks" thought to tantalize, and meeting him on 
the street one morning, they cried, with a woe-begone ex- 
pression on their faces, "O, Mr. Preacher, we're so sorry, 
so sorry; whatever will you do now ? " " Why ? " queried 
the preacher. " Haven't you heard the news ? " " No." 
"The devil is dead." " O, you poor, fatherless children, 
how lonesome you must be ! " And it is a fact, if the devil 
is dead, there must be some terribly lonesome folks in the 
world, so much so that they are manifestly very devilish in 
their loneliness, for I am willing to make affidavit that 
within twenty-fours I have seen and heard things that 
were wonderfully like to the kind of things we used to 
charge to the devil. Perhaps with you it is otherwise. 
Perhaps you have never told a lie in your life, or, even 
more wonderful, perhaps no one has ever lied about you, 
or slandered you, or gossiped of you. Perhaps you have 
always behaved yourself in secret and in public in a 
way that you would rejoice to have published from the 
housetops; in a way that gives you ecstatic contentment as 
you plait a chaplet with which to crown yourself. Perhaps 
in the world in which you live everybody is so good, so 
honest, so chaste, so true, so helpful; all about you the air 
is so morally pure, and the atmosphere so fragrant with the 
odors of holiness, that it is absolutely impossible for you 
to conceive of anything evil in the universe. Perhaps, 
though, it may be otherwise. There may be a maddening 
quantity of all that is the opposite of these good things 
present in yourself and in the world about you ; if so, how 
are you to account for it ? For account for things you 



The Problem of Temptation. 283 

must if you are to wisely walk the path of life. Ponder 
the wisdom hid in the humor of this poem and see if with 
your no-devil theory you can answer these searching 
questions: 

Men don't believe in a devil now as their fathers used to do ; 
They've forced the doors of the broadest creed to let his majesty through ; 
There isn't a print of his cloven foot or a fiery dart from his bow- 
To be found in earth or air to-day, for the world has voted so. 
They say he doesn't go round about as a roaring lion now ; 
But whom shall we hold responsible for the everlasting row 
To be heard in home and Church and State to the earth's remotest 

bound, 
If the devil, by unanimous vote, is nowhere to be found ? 
Who is it mixing the fatal draught that palsies heart and brain. 
And loads the bier of each passing year with a hundred thousand slain ? 
Who blights the bloom of the land to-day with the fiery breath of hell, 
If the devil isn't, and never was ? Won't somebody rise and tell ? 
Who dogs the steps of the toiling saint, and digs the pits for his feet ? 
Who sows the tares in the fields of Time wherever God sows his wheat ? 
The devil was voted not to be, and, of course, the thing is true ; 
But who is doing the kind of work the devil used to do ? 
Won't somebody step to the front forthwith, and make his bow and 

show 
How the frauds and crimes of a single day spring up ? We want to 

know. 
The devil was fairly voted out, and, of course, the devil's gone ; 
But simple people would like to know who carries his business on. 

—Alfred J. Hough. 

You see, you cannot make away with the devil until you 
have made away with devilishness. Clean up the world 
by ridding it of its multitude of infernal rubbish heaps; 
get rid of all that is Satanic in the daily intercourse of men 
with men, and you may have some hope of making them 
believe that there is no personal spirit of evil. But until 
you do that the tremendous mass of evil everywhere 
abounding will cry aloud the existence of a personal devil 
as its cause. Remember neither the Bible nor religion says 
anything about horns and tail. The devil of the cartoon- 
ist is not the devil of revelation, and must not be mistaken 
for him. It is a far cry from the stub-horned, always- 
tailed, sly-faced, dark-visaged devil of the cartoonist to 
that spirit of wondrous power, daring impudence, marvel- 



284 The Eternal Building. 

ous effrontery, terrible malignity, comprehensive intelli- 
gence, and surpassing subtlety who faced the Son of man in 
the wilderness, and dared to contend with him for the mas- 
tery of the world. Though we turn from the devil of The 
Ram's Horn and the vulgar, grotesque creation of Tasso to 
Milton's majestic Satan, we shall not be bettered any. A 
Satan that almost seems sinned against, one who fronts ce- 
lestial hosts with so proud a mien and imperturbable a 
manner, is scarcely the true measure of a being whose 
rebellion is a continuous offense to God and constant curse 
to man. It is idle for us to attempt to picture him; it is 
wise for us to try to realize the terrible import of his ex- 
istence, and learn those measures of his character given 
us in the Holy Book. 

He is a spirit, a fallen angel; he is the spirit that now 
worketh in the children of disobedience. Rebel he, rebels 
he would make of all. Realize that he is a spirit, and you 
may better realize the celerity of his movements. When 
Milton's Satan moved it was with toil and time. How 
much more sublime, yet awful, is the scriptural represen- 
tation of one who as a spirit passes almost instantly from 
end to end of the earth ! Ponder, also, his terrible malig- 
nity. As the author of the ruin of the human race he may 
well be termed the murderer of the whole family of man. 
To this day, though death has been robbed of its horrors, 
he still sways the scepter of the kingdom of the grave ; he 
is, in this relation, the last enemy of man to be destroyed. 
Study his malignity in the cruelties, murders, wars, pov- 
erty, sickness, and suffering that have followed his seduc- 
tion of our first parents. Men, even when most possessed 
by Satan, always seem to have some pity left, but he has 
none. Men by reason of fear, malice, envy, jealousy, 
hatred, perform their villainies; but Satan seems actuated 
only by his insatiable malignity. Dives even in hell was 
anxious about his kindred ; the vilest men, when looking 



The Problem of Temptation. 285 

in the eyes of death, warn from following in their evil 
steps; but Satan is pitiless. He laughs at suffering. He 
lays blow on blow upon Job, gloating as each messenger, 
allowed by fiendish craft to escape, runs with his story of 
destruction to the patriarch; and then, when the man 
wails in his woe, he sets a second Eve upon him, and, fail- 
ing there, blisters and burns him with putrefying lepro- 
sies, and without abatement of his rancor exults as his 
victim writhes in excruciating tortures. Nor is he more 
kind to his own. Mark his cruelty to those who do his 
bidding. Behold them all about you. Mind-destroying 
terrors, loathsome diseases, terrible sufferings, unappeas- 
able appetites, shattered reputations — these the goads with 
which he stings and scourges the lacerated and putrid 
flesh of his own. Death helps them not. If Satan thus 
delights to manifest his diabolical malignity upon them 
here, what shall be their lot when they pass to the shades 
where he is more completely master, and where we may 
justly believe the restraining hand of God will not be ex- 
ercised for their protection? 

Consider his power. Look at him again in his affliction 
of Job. The intellectual subtlety of his plan for Job's 
undoing is only equaled by the power manifested in the 
.execution of that plan. Mark, he works through men and 
nature. At the time that suited him he worked the avarice 
of the Sabeans to a pitch that they dared to fall upon the 
servants of the mighty Job and make away with his prop- 
erty. All their former fear of arousing the enmity of the 
greatest man of his age fled when Satan possessed them. 
Nature's lightning had often played above the flocks of 
the patriarch, but now, by power which Satan possesses 
under the sufferance of God, he plays upon this terrible 
artillery as an imp upon a keyboard, and the fires dart in 
and out among the frenzied sheep until they and their 
shepherds, all but one, are consumed. Behold here the 



286 The Eternal Building. 

contrast between Satan the poetic and Satan the real. 
Milton's Satan tosses angels on his spear; Job's Satan 
hurls thunderbolts and sets the curve to the zigzag light- 
nings that make them strike just where he wills. His 
power knows no tribal or national boundaries. Do the 
Sabeans serve him? so shall the Chaldeans, for Satan, 
proving himself the god of this world, shapes their minds 
to his purpose, and with the skill of the strategist, who 
has no doubt imparted of his ingenuity to the master- 
murders since, he brought up the divided plunderers to 
their work, and again the servants, all save one, are slain, 
and the camels are carried away. Then again he turns to 
nature. The winds that obeyed the voice of the Christ 
and hushed now obey him and roar, and tearing bellowing 
across the plain, smite the house wherein the young are 
frolicking, and, demolishing it, buries them in its debris. 
Yet even here Satan extricates one to run with his terrible 
news to the pauperized prince. 

What a terrible picture of power is this set before us in 
these six vivid verses! Who can stand before such a 
demon? With such a master of malignity at work against 
us, is it not a continuous miracle that we are spared at all? 
How speedily he could make the whole earth a charnel 
house were he not restrained! Not the might of all the 
world's armies nor the skill of all our scientific destroyers 
could withstand him for a day. Aye, we have only to read 
the story of the past to learn that his easiest way of de- 
stroying men has been to set them at each other's throats. 
This is the Satan of Scripture. A giant — not in size, but 
in iniquity! Terrible in unrighteousness, marvelous in 
diabolism, horrifying in cruelty, matchless in ferocity! Be- 
fore him we may well tremble — yet this fiend is not master; 
he is only a servant. So far he may go, but no farther. 
" Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon him- 
self put not forth thine hand." And then when Job had 



The Problem of Temptation. 287 

stood that test and sinned not with his mouth, and Satan 
returned to taunt God with purchased service, the word 
was spoken, Behold, he is in thy hand; but touch not 
his life. 

Powerful though the fiend be, there is One who has 
power to chain him. " Aye, Satan is mighty," cried Mar- 
tin Luther, "but he can never be Almighty, as my Lord 
and Saviour is." This is our hope, and this is our con- 
fidence. With this powerful, terrible prince of evil we 
must contend; we can hope for victory in the contest only 
as we allow the Almighty to manifest his conquering might 
through us. 

As to why Satan is in the world it is idle for us to spec- 
ulate. It is enough to know that he is here, and that with 
him we are compelled to contend. This much we are as- 
sured: Satan is a gigantic failure, yet the wisdom of God 
puts even failures to service; and this gigantic failure 
being in the world, he is used of God to test and try us 
that we may prove whether we are failures or successes. 
Temptation — testing — is a law of life everywhere evident. 
The world is a testing place. All testing involves the 
possibility of failure, and this is what makes the fact of 
temptation so terrible. If we were sure of conquering 
whenever tempted, if God would always lead us through 
temptation (this seems to be the meaning of the petition in 
the Lord's Prayer), if we were sure to come forth from all 
temptation like Joseph from Potiphar's house and the 
Hebrew children from the fiery furnace, then we would re- 
joice. But when temptation means defeat, ruin, and even 
eternal doom to some, then we tremble in the presence of 
our daily facing of this problem. Yet, though we tremble, 
tested we must be. Looking the possibility of our defeat 
and eternal ruin in the eyes, we must go forward to prove 
ourselves a son of God or a slave of hell. 

The advertisement of a popular bicycle pictures a braced 
19 



288 The Eternal Building. 

wheel on which a plank has been laid, and a horse teeters 
on the plank. Another shows a gang of fifteen or twenty- 
men upon the plank. What is the meaning of these pic- 
tures ? They depict the testing of a wheel — the tempta- 
tion of the steel. If the wheel stands the test, the makers 
can send it out guaranteed to withstand the wear of the 
ruts and the cobbles of unkept roads. In testing many- 
wheels much steel must be thrown away. They are fail- 
ures ; but only by testing, with its attendent loss, can the 
maker gain and maintain his reputation and the lives of 
the riders be preserved. So in these days of microbes. 
Disease germs are tested. It means death to many ani- 
mals (and not a few of them are human animals — the test- 
ing physicians) that the experiments go forward, but the 
result is race-blessing in its disease destroying or master- 
ing, and life-preserving results. Guns and swords must 
be put to the test before they are put in the hands of 
soldiers. A certain proportion always fail to stand the 
test — they crack or bend or break or burst, and must go 
to the refuse heap — but only by the testing can the army 
be assured, as they face the foe, that they have arms that 
will not fail them in the crucial hour. 

It is thus everywhere and with everything. To get any- 
thing that we dare trust we are compelled to test, and it 
is because we realize that every test involves the possibility 
of destruction, and that that which stands the test seems 
to have overcome that possibility, that we trust it. 

This law is not one merely of mechanics; it is one of 
nature. Look in your garden. Observe the testing there. 
There are a thousand buds, but scarce a hundred 
flowers. Look upon the orchard. Whole acres of radiant, 
fragrant blossoms, but the rain pelts them, the wind tears 
them, the sun scorches them, and the insects devour them, 
and their attempt at fruit-forming proves a failure ; the 
full-grown fruit being not one in scores to the fruit begun. 




JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



Born to wealth, ease, and station, he mastered them and 
put himself to the service of the race. 

" Looking within myself, I note how thin 

A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate 
Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin ; 
In my own heart I find the worst man's mate, 
And see not dimly the smooth-hinged gate 
That opes to those abysses 
Where ye grope darkly — ye who never knew 
On your young hearts love's consecrating dew, 
Or felt a mother's kisses." 

— Lowell. 



The Problem of Temptation. 289 

Look in the air. It is a vast slaughterhouse. Every 
bird is a murderer, and there is scarce an insect on which 
they feed that is not also a murderer. Millions of ani- 
mate forms try to get on in this aerial world, but do so 
only by putting to death a host of those less powerful. 

It is so with the sea. Each fish is a cemetery. From 
the tiny fin flashing in the flying foam to the monstrous 
growths of the lowest levels the sea is peopled with those 
who live by destroying others who attempt to live. And 
what are we ? What sepulchers are our bellies. Within 
them the preserved, well-oiled, pickled, seasoned mum- 
mies of all climes find a resting place. For us the sea, 
the air, and the fields must give of their attempts at 
life. 

Thus you see that everywhere everything is put on trial. 
Some fail, some succeed. But so far you will notice that 
there has been no malignancy in the testing. The sun 
did not hate the flower it withered; the winds did not hate 
the tree it tore up by the roots; the cod did not hate the 
mackerel it swallowed; you did not hate the steer that 
gave you your beef nor the hog that sputtered in your 
oven. So far from malignancy entering here, it is known 
that many a farm mother has shed tears when plucking 
the feathers from the old rooster that was to be served for 
the family dinner. 

Thus far the whole contest has been a battle for the 
belly. There has been no morality or lack of it in the 
struggle, and there has been no malignancy, and why ? 
Because, barring our reference to man, there has been no 
mind in the contest. In the struggle upward of the animal 
world only the animal qualities are tried, hence there was 
no moral test; but when we come to man we find that in 
the man that is not present in the lower animals. Man has a 
mind. It discovers that there are two paths through the 
world, two ways to fill the stomach, two ways to gratify 



290 The Eternal Building. 

the appetites and the passions, two ways to rise to place 
and power — a right way and a wrong way — and there at 
once begins the struggle — the temptation within him as to 
which of these ways he will walk. If there is any truth in 
the doctrine of the survival of the fittest — the more 
euphonious way of saying the survival of those most able 
to resist — the biologist has hitched his wagon to but a seg- 
ment of the truth. The rule applies to moral growth as 
well. The world is a school for moral training, growing, 
and we grow only by our power of resisting, overcoming, 
the evil everywhere at work to overcome us. We are to 
be Over comers ; it is for overcomers that the heavenly man- 
sions are prepared. It is the overcomer who is born of 
God, who shall be clothed in white, who shall eat of the 
tree of life, who shall hear his name confessed by the 
Lamb in heaven, who shall be a pillar in the temple of 
God, and who shall sit with Jesus on his throne. The 
world is our testing place; the world is to be overcome, or 
we prove ourselves unfit for a better world. Temptation 
is inevitable. Every individual is put face to face with 
ruin, and must accept the possibility of eternal failure. 
Malignity enters here; we contend not with scorching 
sun, uprooting winds, voracious appetites, life-sucking 
parasites, but with the devil, the god of this world, the 
prince of this world, the prince of darkness, the rebellious 
fiend who seeks to mount the throne God has erected in 
each one of us. With him we must contend; happy we, 
if we show ourselves such masters of ourselves that he 
" leaveth us for a season," rather than by putting our hand 
in his begin an unending companionship with the author 
of vice and the cultivator of corruption. 

Adam was not tempted for all the race. He but typi- 
fied the awful fact that every man is led up in his Eden 
or his wilderness to be tempted, tested, tried, assaulted, 
by innumerable demons — stretched, racked, tormented, 



The Problem of Temptation. 291 

until every fiber of his being declares itself. Why ? That 
he may be revealed to himself. Temptation is the contest 
that gives us our revelation of ourselves, and until we have 
had that we know not what manner of creature we are. 
Self-revelation is necessary if we are ever to so set our- 
selves to battle against the evil within us and about us that 
we shall prove ourselves fit for eternal residence with God. 
It is very difficult for us to see ourselves as we really are. 
We are prone to think more highly of ourselves than we 
have any right to think. To consider ourselves better 
than other folks. We catch this man in his lie, or that 
woman in her slandering, that one in her shame, and this 
one in his blood-letting, and we exclaim, U I would not do 
that ! " but placed where they were placed, and just as black 
would be the infamy and as red the murder committed by 
us. You start aghast as the club descends upon the head 
of Abel, and uplift your hands in holy horror, yet when the 
fires of hate take hold on you, though your hands remain 
as fair and sweet as a virgin's, the brand of Cain leaps to 
your forehead at the touch of God. You hiss at Jacob for 
his sly treacheries and wily thefts, and count yourself his 
better, but like chances coming to you in your day, 
you rob the poor, defraud customers or creditors, and 
make your community a-hissing with your villainies. 
For Delilah you have naught but scorn and loud-mouthed 
denunciation, but shaven, shorn, strengthless young men 
walk the streets to-day as the monuments of your infamy. 
Speak of Judas, and you shudder ; one would think the 
halter from which he fell to burst asunder was about your 
neck. You loathe him, you revile his name, and execrate 
his memory. His hideous treachery in putting his false 
lips to those of the Nazarene never fails to arouse your 
hot denunciations and most scathing vituperation, yet, 
even while the heat of such moods stirs you, you put your 
own lips to those of the Christ in consecrations that would 



292 The Eternal Building. 

transform your life and your community, did you not turn 
from them to sell your Lord for a paltry bribe of pleasure 
or gain or place or favor, and blaspheme his name by sin- 
ning high-handedly against such light as Judas never 
knew. The tribe of Ananias and Sapphira, of Brutus and 
Arnold, are still multitudinous in the world. Lies and 
treacheries are still the greatest hinderers of the progress 
of the kingdom of God, the greatest destroyers of personal 
worth and character. But we will never admit this; we 
will never grasp our own measure until routed or racked 
by temptation we are revealed to ourselves and find that 
it is not somebody else's heart but our own that is deceit- 
ful above all things and desperately wicked. You must 
discover yourself, and temptation is the Columbus of self- 
hood. 

We are the sons of God, but we are untrained. The 
world is our training ground. Face to face with tempta- 
tion we are trained. Even as Christ learned obedience 
by the things which he suffered, so must we. The training 
is not a holiday affair. It is the most serious business of 
our lives, for our training is not to gain fitness for time, 
but for eternity. The drill we are subjected to is to pre- 
pare us for eternal service. We know there is no train- 
ing physically that does not involve the possibility of 
destruction, and with the utmost awe we are compelled to 
believe that in the spiritual world the same rule holds 
good; all spiritual training involves the possibility of de- 
struction. 

Look at the temptation, trial, risk, in all physical and 
intellectual training. There is the boy in your home. You 
want to make a man of him. But such he will never be- 
come if you keep him rolled in cotton and rocked in the 
cradle. This may save him from broken bones, burns, 
and knockdowns, but will end in imbecility. If he is to be 
a man, he must face the world with all its smiles and 



The Problem of Temptation. 293 

frowns. He must sweat in summer and freeze in winter, 
run the gauntlet of all diseases from the colic and the 
mumps to the more dread destroyers of mature life. All 
the care in the world will not destroy the risk. The pride 
of the palace sometimes dies of diphtheria — a disease largely 
confined to the poor — while the pet of the hovel fades away 
from some overloading of sweetmeats. You would have 
your boy a rough and ready chap; so when he desires you 
let him climb a tree. To be sure, he may come down from 
its branches more suddenly than desired with a broken 
arm, or even a broken neck, but you take the risk. You 
want him to swim; so you are too wise to hum to him, 
"Hang your clothes on a hickory bush, but don't go near 
the water." Into the water he plunges; it may be to his 
death, but you take the risk. You would have him fill his 
brain; so you send him to school. That means contact 
with all the riff-raff and scum of humanity. He will hear 
things that have, perhaps, been overlong kept from him by 
the pure lips of his own. He will come home with oaths 
and obscenity driveling from his lips. He will come home, 
too, with a black eye, or a bloody nose, or a cut lip, and 
his conceit knocked out of him, but for the sake of his 
head-filling you take all the risk. It is all necessary to 
the making of a man. By and by your boy is ready for 
college. Thus far he has stood the test with honor. He 
is pure, clean, upright, noble, but will he remain so? Four 
years at college are a severe test to one fresh from the 
restraints and protection of the home nest. Among a 
thousand congregated youngsters are some who are pretty 
sure to establish a little earthly hell; happy are you if your 
boy, like Dante, can walk all its depths unscathed. Some- 
body's boy will fall there. Physical and moral wrecks will 
totter away from those halls with no diploma save the one 
written by Satan in their rotten, diseased forms. Some 
will carry a great and noble name to the college only to 



294 The Eternal Building. 

load it with shame and bow down the gray heads of noble 
sires in sorrow to the grave. Will you hold your boy back 
from his studies because you know this to be so ? No. 
Though your neighbor has just put the wreck of his boy 
beneath the sod, you will clinch your teeth, stay a little 
longer on your knees with mother and the boy some morn- 
ing, plead with more fervor for God's blessing on your 
pride, and then, facing all the risk, send him forth to con- 
quer or be conquered by the temptations that await him. 
Without temptation there is no education. 

So, if you would give your boy a trade, possible destruc- 
tion frowns on him from every side. The farmer has been 
cut in pieces by his own mower, the mechanic been maimed 
and crushed by his own machine, the soldier been blown 
to atoms in time of peace by a bursting target gun, a sailor 
is washed from the deck to his death every day in the year, 
the miner been buried beneath the fallen mass of the caved 
mine or suffocated by the noxious damp, the carpenter has 
tripped from the scaffold into his grave, the mason been 
crushed by slipping granite block or falling wall, the brake- 
man been mangled between the cars he has coupled, and 
the engineer destroyed with his hand on the throttle. Yet 
all these callings lack not for men to work them. Men 
facing the risk spring forward to fill all the gaps. They 
know that every calling has its risks, and they press in for 
their bread. 

It is the same in business; only here the failure of one 
works a wider destruction. Every man who enters busi- 
ness risks failure. There are a certain number of failures 
every year, and neither skill, honesty, nor trickery can 
always prevent them. These failures are destructive not 
only to the immediate parties, but to many others; the 
greater the business the more far-reaching the destructive 
influence, yet men must continue to do business in face of 
all the risk. Banks fail, cashiers will abscond, and presi- 



The Problem of Temptation. 295 

dents embezzle, but we must continue to face the risk and 
bank, or the commerce of the world will come to a stand- 
still. Without temptation there is no business. 

But you say this is not temptation; it is only risk. You 
are wrong. There is risk simply because there is tempta- 
tion. If there were no temptation to dishonesty, tricker)', 
and carelessness, there would be no risk in business. There 
are few failures in the business world that cannot be traced 
to a yielding to the temptation to buy too much, or on 
false pretenses, or to sell on long credits or to doubt- 
ful parties. Take the deaths we have noticed in the 
trades. By far the larger part are occasioned by the 
temptation to heedlessness in the performance of their 
work resulting from familiarity with it. The farmer has 
mowed so many acres that he thinks he can mow with his 
eyes shut; he attempts, only to open his eyes in another 
world. The carpenter has trotted along so many scaf- 
folds that he becomes careless of his steps, and one un- 
thoughtful one hurls him to his death. The old machine 
or engine or boiler had worked so long, even after being con- 
demned, that it will work just one day more, but it finishes 
the day in pieces and slays its engineer. Temptation 
yielded to is the great commercial, industrial, and intel- 
lectual destroyer, as well as the great moral destroyer. 

What shall we do, then ? Stand on our sonship to Almighty 
God and resist temptations until they flee from us. Re- 
sistance is the beginning of conquering. Study Christ in 
the wilderness. He fought there not only for himself, 
but as an ensample for us all. He conquered in the wil- 
derness as a man. Satan insinuated, il ff thou be the Son 
of God? " Christ in his answer denied not his divinity, but 
did affirm his humanity, "Man shall not live by bread 
alone." He was the Son of God. With all adoration we 
bow before him; but if we are to grasp the vast purport 
and comfort and inspiration of the temptation in the wil- 



296 The Eternal Building. 

derness, we must realize that in that contest Jesus did not 
stand upon his divinity, but upon his humanity. As a 
man, yet a man who, like each of us, is also a Son of God, 
he faced the prince of darkness, and starving, racked, 
famished, tortured, mocked, he resorted to no power to 
gain the victory but that which was his by right of his hu- 
man sonship toward God, power which only awaits exer- 
cise by us to give us victory as glorious as came to him. 
Great is the mystery, but we gain nothing by trying to 
whittle its wonders away. The temptation of Jesus was a 
real temptation. He did not enter the wilderness assured 
of triumph. It was possible for him to fall. It was pos- 
sible that when the Son of Mary joined combat with the 
prince of this world that the victory should run to Satan. 
Jesus was tempted — really, completely — in all points like 
as we are. Possible defeat shook its batlike wings in his 
face and sought to unman him, but he stood firm. He 
fought the fight, and as a man won back what Adam lost — 
the power to make Satan take " No " for an answer. In 
the wilderness Jesus was revealed to himself. From that 
moment he knew himself in the grandeur of his conquering 
character. There he learned that he was master of sin, 
and again and again when foes pressed hard he could, with 
a boldness that is startling to us, fall back upon the con- 
tinuing sinlessness of his life and overwhelm them with 
the question, " Which of you convinceth me of sin ?" 

Temptation reveals character. It shows the stuff of 
which we are made. The more terrible the temptations 
the swifter their arrows fly, and the more fierce their as- 
saults the more commandingly glorious the character ap- 
pears that comes out of them all victorious. But more, 
a man cannot master temptation and remain just as he 
was before. You cannot strike Satan between the eyes a 
dozen times without becoming better able- to strike him a 
second dozen blows. Spiritual muscle develops by exercise 



The Problem of Temptation. 297 

fully as much as physical muscle. Temptations met and 
mastered, wrong resisted, hell worsted, do more than reveal 
character ; they create character. A man is more a man when 
he has conquered the devil within him than he ever was be- 
fore. He may come out of the contest all scarred and 
maimed, but no man who ever fought and bled in freedom's 
cause has half the right to glory in his wounds as that man 
who has fought for his eternal life and eternal good name 
with him who has power to destroy both for time and 
eternity. Fight — God fights with you. Triumph — it is 
possible. Christ has revealed the way. 

There is no place for you in the world until you have 
proved yourself. The Innocents Abroad are ever ludicrous ; 
their innocence is weakness, not strength. We justly 
trust no man's morality until we have tested it. The man 
who has never betrayed a trust because he has never had 
a trust to betray is seldom advanced in life. This is not 
" treating every man as a scoundrel until he has proved 
himself upright, ".but it is recognizing the world-wide fact 
that man is liable to fall when he is tempted, and we 
trust none until through the crucible of repeated tempta- 
tions they prove their ability and power to resist tempta- 
tion and reveal the stalwart strength of their character. 

How shall you resist temptation ? First, keep away 
from it. Lots of people are their own worst tempter. 
They blame the devil for what they do themselves. Rus- 
kin says, " No one can ask honestly or hopefully to be de- 
livered from temptation unless he has honestly and firmly 
determined to keep out of it." "To pray against temp- 
tations and yet rush into occasions is to thrust your fingers 
into the fire and then pray that they may not be burnt. 
... If you hold the stirrup, no wonder if Satan gets into 
the saddle."* "To go purposely one inch within a mil- 
lion miles of temptation is to go 999,999 miles, 5,279 feet, 

* Seeker, Non-Such Professor. 



298 The Eternal Building. 

and ii inches too near to it. When I see some of you, 
dearly beloved, flirting with sin I realize that the under- 
takers have not yet buried all the fools. " * Don't flirt 
with sin. Keep away from it. If, as you will many 
times, you run upon sin unexpectedly, fight by the old 
Parthian method — run away. "He left his garment in 
her hand, and fled, and got him out." That was the way 
Joseph conquered. That was the way he maintained his 
purity. He fled the tempter, ran from the siren, when 
his will mastered his heels, and when they had borne him 
away it had mastered the whole man. Flight is often the 
best kind of a fight. There was a little boy who could not 
run because he was sick in his bed, but he did the next 
best thing — he made others run. His mother, as he real- 
ized for his good, forbade him to eat cake. His sister 
came into the room eating some. It looked good. His 
mouth watered. He longed for some, but he had grit and 
wit, and cried, "Jennie, you must run right away out of 
this room with that cake, and Pll keep my eyes shut while 
you go, so I sha'n't want any." That's conquering. 

" The ancient naturalists wrote much of basilisks, whose 
eyes fascinated their victims and rendered them an easy 
prey ; so the mere gaze of wickedness puts us in solemn 
danger. He who would be safe from acts of evil must 
haste away from the occasions of it, A covenant must be 
made with our eyes not even to look upon the cause of 
temptation ; for such sins only need a spark to begin with 
and a blaze follows in an instant. Who would wantonly 
enter the leper's prison and sleep amid its horrid corrup- 
tion ? He only who desires to be leprous himself thus courts 
contagion. If the mariner knew how to avoid the storm, he 
would do anything rather than run the risk of weathering 
it. Cautious pilots have no desire to try how near the 
quicksand they can sail, or how often they may touch a 

* Peter Peculiar, in New York Observer, 



The Problem of Temptation. 299 

rock without springing a leak. Their aim is to keep as 
near as possible in the middle of the channel." * A half- 
witted fellow quit drinking, and whenever after that he 
had to pass the saloon where he had formerly been en- 
trapped he crossed the road and went by on the other side. 
That fellow used grandly the half of wit he possessed. 
Pattern after him, whether you are half, three quarters, or 
full-witted. An Englishman spelled " saloon" with a 
' ' hess " and a l ' hay " and a ' ' hell " and two ' ' hoes " and 
a ''hen." He got it right. There is hell in the saloon, 
and lots of men have hell in their lives because they run 
there after it. 

"A companion of fools shall be destroyed." Run with 
Satan, camp on the edges of sin, and you will be destroyed. 
A recent explosion along the Hudson River was caused by 
a workman who attempted to light his pipe while sitting 
on a powder keg. He and two others were blown into 
eternity. Just such is the folly and fate of many who 
play hide and seek with Beelzebub. To expose yourself 
recklessly to the fire of hell is not courageous, but suicidal. 
In the line of duty we should be ready to face any peril, 
but in mere bravado or recklessness to put our head in the 
lion's mouth is to merit the life-ending snap of his jaws. 
At the siege of Namur William of Orange was surprised 
and angered to see Godfrey, a deputy governor of the 
Bank of England, among his staff exposed to the fierce 
fire of the battle. Having business at the camp, Godfrey 
had allowed his curiosity to see real war to lead him to his 
present perilous position. "What are you doing here ?" 
demanded William. " You have no business here and have 
no right to run these hazards." "But, your majesty, I 
run no more risk than yourself." " Not so, I am where 
my duty calls me, and without presumption may commit 
my life to the care of God; but you — " A cannon ball 

* Spurgeon. 



300 The Eternal Building. 

that moment closed the ears of Godfrey and laid him dead 
at the feet of the king's horse. 

''Depend upon it, brethren, there is densely concen- 
trated wisdom in that brief but telling legend, 'Don't 
monkey with a buzz saw.' Once upon a time a man with 
an inquiring turn of mind sallied forth to visit a factory. 
The machinery fascinated him. He saw the buzz saw. 
Some one called his attention to the legend aforemen- 
tioned. But so silently, so swiftly, so almost impercep- 
tibly did the buzz saw make its revolutions, putting all the 
Central American republics out of sight, that the man 
could not believe that there was motion there. He put his 
foot against the buzz saw to see if it was running. It 
was, but he will run no more. His investigation cost him 
some of the best toes he ever possessed. There were mo- 
tion and emotion and commotion then, brethren, and 
now he painfully recognizes the wit of the old saw, ' Don't 
monkey with a buzz saw.' Let us rise and sing: 

" We are prone every one to temptation ; 

It is human to err and to stray ; 
'Tis a fact that may lack explanation, 

But 'tis one that you cannot gainsay. 

" So my text is a wise one for mortals 
When they're nearing the doorway of sin ; 

It is better to keep from its portals, 
And to quit it before you begin. 

" Sure, the Gospel tries hard to impress it ; 

'Tis a story oft told in the law, 
And I'm sure it is easy to guess it, 

O, beware of the circular saw." * 

If you would resist temptation, shun the beginnings of 
evil. Evil is an endless chain; once the sprocket of your 
life enters a link, it is difficult to withdraw it. One lie 
calls for another. If the hand goes into the till, it will go 
again. False entries are never made singly; evil is ever a 
thing of double entry. Every drunkard began with a 

* Peter Peculiar. 






The Problem of Temptation. 301 

single glass. The harlot was first a flirt. Card-playing is 
seldom learned in the gambling den. You don't learn to 
waltz in the ballroom. The first steps in evil are nearly 
always quiet ones taken in secret places. Alone with our- 
selves we debase ourselves. We mean to stop, but we can- 
not. Like the sled of the coaster, we start slowly and 
timidly, but with every advance there is increase of veloc- 
ity, and it is destruction to throw ourselves off fully as 
much as to ride to the bottom. To begin sinning is to 
continue sinning. Naught but the grace of God can 
snatch us from the toboggan in time to save our souls, 
and not even the grace of God can snatch us away in 
time to save our bodies. 

Remember, every hook will be baited. You will never 
see the horns of the devil. If you saw them, you would 
not let him in, but when he comes to you like a gentleman 
and with the suavity of a diplomat, you dust the easy 
chair for him. Then he has you. All your strength will 
never get him out of the door. In vain is the empty 
snare laid for the bird. It must be cunningly hid and 
well larded with seed. A black, unbaited hook never 
caught a fish. Satan never trapped a man by giving him 
a vision of hell. As every theater has a beautiful outer 
curtain to cover the sham in its rear, so Satan ever holds 
up a tinseled drapery to lure on his dupes. "When Satan 
assaults any poor soul he surfers nothing to appear to the 
eye but pleasure, profit, a sweet satisfaction of our de- 
sires, and a phantasm of happiness. There are also wrath, 
and judgment, and torment, and sting of conscience be- 
longing to it; these must be, but these shall not be seen. 
All the way is white snow; that hides the pit. Green 
grass tempts us to walk ; the serpent is unseen. If 
temptations, like plaids, could be turned on both sides, 
the kingdom of darkness would not be so populous. If 
David could have foreseen the grief of his broken bones 



302 The Eternal Building. 

ere he fell upon Bath-sheba, those aspersions of blood and 
lust had not befallen him. If Achan could have foreseen 
the stones about his ears before he filched those accursed 
things, he would never have fingered them. But, as it 
was said of Adam and Eve after their fall, ' Then their, 
eyes were opened ; ' then, not before. Judas was blind 
till he had done the deed; then his eyes were opened, and 
he saw it in its true horror. " * 

Don't bank on your strength. There is no man but has 
his weak spots, and be sure the devil will find them. The 
weakness may be an inheritance from the past. Heredi- 
tary transmission of weakness unfought has slain many. 
The one whose parents have died with consumption had 
better not serve as caretaker of tuberculosis; no more 
should the offspring of the drunkard believe that he can 
hold his nose over the beer mug or wine cup with im- 
punity. These inheritances may not slay you, but the 
devil has a field plowed for his sowing whenever he finds 
such a one. Happy are you if you get in your sowing of 
good in time to choke the tares. Wherein your parents 
or grandparents failed to measure up to the highest ideal 
of what you want to be, watch you that their weakness or 
failure is not repeated in your career. Among the many 
resolutions that Jonathan Edwards put down for his own 
guidance was this: " Resolved, never to do anything 
which, if I should see it in another, I should count a just 
occasion to despise him for or to think any more meanly 
of him." Try your forbears by the same rule. If they 
did things that lower them in your estimation, fight against 
your blood duplicating those things in your life. 

But our weak points are not all inherited. Many are 
of our own making. We develop habits that are all the 
devils necessary to our destruction. Fight your habits 
until the evil ones are dead and the right ones disciplined 

♦Adams. 



The Problem of Temptation. 303 

for instant service. When you have trained your eyes to 
close against the lewd picture or scene, your ears to be- 
come deaf to the tales of the scandal monger, and your 
mouth to shut in the hot or false sentence and shut out 
the unclean thing, as swiftly as your eye will close against 
the flying cinder or your hand withdraw itself from the 
fire — then you are in a fair way to be a man, a woman, and 
can begin to think yourself the master of yourself. 

You will never learn the mastery of temptation by 
watching somebody else, but by watching yourself. Your 
weakness is not mine; mine is not yours; but the devil 
knows us both, and he, the mighty strategist, smites when 
and where he knows we are most vulnerable. Napoleon 
won many of his victories because he had studied the 
character of the opposing commander as much as his 
army. He knew just about what he would do under cer- 
tain circumstances, and he used that knowledge to destroy 
him. So with Satan; he has studied us until he knows us 
better than we know ourselves, and thus he snares us. It 
is time we reverse the process and study the methods by 
which Satan approaches us, until again and again as he 
comes to us we can say, "No you don't, my eyes are 
open ; you must devise a new plan, or you will never catch 
me." The early frontiersmen soon learned to play it on 
the Indians and turn their craft into foolishness. The 
favorite hour for attack by the Indians was just before 
daylight, when it is supposed man sleeps soundest; so the 
pioneer slept soundly and with few guards through the 
first hours of the night, but were awake and well prepared 
to resist when the Indians sought to surprise them. Study 
the tactics of Satan, and you will often be able to beat him 
at his own game. 

Don't make a fool of yourself by massing all your guns 
around your strong quarters, and bragging about your 
never-captured flags that fly there. By so doing you only 
30 



304 The Eternal Building. 

expose yourself to more speedy and humiliating defeat. 
Dr. Tyler very strongly paints the picture of such people. 
1 'It is so much more pleasant to consider the things in 
which we excel, the elements in which we are strong, and 
the things in which we are victorious, that we hide, even 
from our own view, our vulnerable points. It thus often 
comes to pass that we give most attention to the points 
least needing attention. Take that man who has no 
temptation for strong drink, and he is likely to pride him- 
self on the fact that he is a total abstainer, and to have 
little sympathy for the man who has fallen easy prey to 
the demon of drink. But that same man, strong and safe 
at this point, may have some other weakness even worse. 
He may cherish malice. All manner of malign feelings 
may find a welcome in his heart. He may be the slave of 
avarice. Look at that born spendthrift, in whose hand 
money seems- as live coals. He prides himself on his 
generosity; that is his strong point. But he has nothing 
to say, even to himself, about his weak points. He may 
be the slave of appetite, of carnal passion, of degrading 
lust. There is another man, with a tongue so slow that 
he rarely speaks, and with a temper so phlegmatic that it 
is rarely ruffled, and he finds his favorite text in the thirty- 
ninth Psalm: "I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I 
sin not with my tongue; I will keep my mouth with a 
bridle." He places the guard at the wrong point, for he 
is in little danger of hasty speech. That resolution is in 
order where the temper is quick and the tongue swift to 
speak. The mistake of these persons is the same as that 
of the general who places his guard at the strong point, 
and leaves the weak one unprotected. The enemy has 
little trouble in capturing forts guarded in that way."* 

The best earthly way to master temptation is to keep 
yourself well employed. "Johnnie, what are you doing ? " 

* Talks to Young People. 



The Problem of Temptation. 305 

cried a mother. "Nuthin'." "What! don't you know 
that Satan always finds something for idle hands to do ? 
Here, pare these apples." That mother had the thought 
right, if she did make a slip in the application that stirs 
our mirth. Idleness is a curse. Laziness is a vice. To 
do nothing is to sin. Stagnation means corruption every 
time. "An idle brain is the devil's workshop," and idle 
feet and hands are the tools he works with. An empty 
house is always dirty, and so is an empty life. It is not 
enough that the old tenents are put out; new ones must 
enter. The Christian is not an empty man, though sin has 
been cast out of him. He is a God-filled, tenanted man. 
He is safe because he is inhabited by a mighty tenant. In 
the parable of Jesus the empty, untenanted house was an 
invitation to the cast-out evil spirit to return. He accepted 
the invitation, but in returning brought seven other demons 
more wicked than himself with him, and the last state of 
the human habitation was worse than the first. Occupy 
yourself unto all holiness, or the devil will occupy you to 
your destruction. The Christian who steadily goes about 
his Father's business is seldom torn with doubts, and the 
man who fills his hours with steady labor will be too busy 
hoeing his own row to do much for the devil. The lazy 
farmer grows the most tares. 

Napoleon said, "Conquer by supplanting." Shrewdness 
says, "Get ahead of the other fellow." Wisdom says, 
"Get ahead of the devil, and stay ahead." David prac- 
ticed these rules when he nipped in the bud the rebellion 
of Adonijah. The would-be usurper planned neatly. Be- 
sides many of the princes, Joab, the great soldier, and 
Abiathar, the great priest, cast in their lot with him. Then 
came the feast of En-rogel, where the conspirators made 
merry in anticipation of the crowns and fat offices that 
were soon to be theirs. At the conclusion of the feast they 
were going to proclaim Adonijah king, but while .they 



306 The Eternal Building. 

were feasting David, apprised of their plot, acted. He 
sent no army upon them to trouble them. He knew he 
could no longer lead his fighting men, for he was old and 
stricken with death. There was a more wise and expedi- 
tious way to end the dreams of Adonijah. The royal mule 
was brought from the stables; Solomon, the son of Bath- 
sheba, who had been pledged the throne, was mounted 
upon it. The coronation procession was quickly formed; 
Nathan the prophet and Zadok the priest led the van. To 
the music of Davidic marches the young man was led 
forth to the Spring of Gihon. The people gather; from the 
horn of oil taken from the tabernacle Zadok anoints the 
young man king. Then the trumpets blew and the torches 
flamed, and all the people cried, " God save King Solo- 
mon!" They had a mighty time. "The people piped 
with pipes, and rejoiced with great joy, so that the earth 
rent with the sound of them." They were having a glo- 
rious time at Gihon, for they had taken time by the fore- 
lock. When the earth shakes even gluttons cease smack- 
ing their lips. Adonijah and his guests heard the shouts 
just "as they had made an end of eating ." They were not 
long in getting scared. The old king had not forgotten 
his cunning. With King Solomon, cheered by the people, 
while King David was living to give him his blessing, 
there was no room for King Adonijah. The feasting 
place was quickly deserted. Adonijah, instead of clasping 
a crown, runs fast to clasp the horns of the altar, nor 
dares to let them go until King Solomon gives him his 
pledge of pardon. 

That is the one way to get the better of the tempter. 
Put the good in possession of the throne. While the devil 
feasts do you pray. When he conspires let your righteous 
acts be swift to outwit him. If you would prevent Satan, 
crown Christ. 

The best heavenly way to master temptation is to culti- 



The Problem of Temptation. 307 

vate the consciousness of the presence of God. Live in 
the Spirit. Lean hard on the arm of God. Know that his 
eye is ever on you, and where rests his eye there rests his 
love. He will not leave thee nor forsake thee. Divine 
aid will come to you as truly to-day as in any past time if 
you are in need. Remember you are God's. You have 
no right to sin. If you sin, you disgrace your Father. If 
you sin, you wound afresh your Elder Brother. If you sin, 
you insult the Holy Spirit, that, as a tender mother, has 
watched over you and guarded you. You cannot sin with- 
out making light of the teachings of that Spirit and refus- 
ing to use the power of his indwelling presence. Prove 
yourself a God's man. That is the last meaning of 
temptation. You know it not, I know it not, but if the 
history of Job has any meaning for us, it is this: When we 
know it not Satan taunts God concerning us, and God, 
ready to have us prove the power and grandeur of a God- 
like life, suffers us to be tempted by the devil. We are in 
the world as God's proof-men. To stand the test and 
glorify our Father in heaven, who is never without sons, 
holy and triumphant, among the sons of men. Let the 
noble utterance of Joseph, in the presence of his beautiful 
tempter, ever ring its inspiration in your ears, " How can 
I do this great wickedness, and sin against God ? " It was 
to more than adultery that he was invited. It was to re- 
jection and disgracing of God. He was not his own. He 
was not in Egypt for his own pleasure. He was alive to 
live for God, and in Egypt to play the man who stood 
true to the God of his fathers. Though he had suffered 
him to be sold, God had not withdrawn his presence from 
the pride of Jacob, and Joseph would not, for all the 
beauties in Pharaoh's court, disgrace the Holy One he 
served. The Lord was with him, consciously, preciously, 
and against him he would not sin, and with such a resolu- 
tion formed, all the powers of God within him surged and 



308 The Eternal Building. 

swelled to keep him true to the mastery of himself. Thus 
resolve, pilgrim of the twentieth century, and the God who 
was the helper of Joseph in the olden time will prove 
himself just the same to-day. 

" There are times in our experience when the only thing 
we can do is to cast ourselves entirely upon Him. We 
read of travelers whose route across the higher Alps leads 
them along perilous paths no broader than a mule's foot- 
hold, skirting dizzy precipices, from which the foaming 
river below appears as a silver thread. They may come to 
places where the safest thing they can do is to take their 
hands from the bridle, fold their arms, and close their eyes. 
And there are times when to be saved from falling we 
must take our hands from the guiding reins, fold our arms, 
close our eyes, and commit ourselves to God. He will 
bring us through all our perils in safety. Whatever may 
be said of the weakness of human nature unhelped, there 
is no need for even the weakest to despair. We have a 
divine Helper who has passed through the thickest of the 
strife unharmed, and he is able to succor all them who are 
tempted. Even the weakest may pass by his help through 
the sorest strife. The victorious song sung by the re- 
deemed hosts of heaven ascribes their victory to the 
Lamb." * 

"Behold, angels came and ministered unto Him." This is 
ever the aftermath of temptation. He was not taken out 
of the world, but here in the world heaven came down to 
cheer and brighten. As it was with Christ, so it is with 
Christ's. After the temptation and the victory, though we 
lie stretched pale and trembling from the contest, the 
angels come, and great cheer and an indescribable sense 
of self-mastery and the unspeakable joy of the conqueror 
stir in our souls. So soon as we have learned to say, and 
say so as to be obeyed, "Get thee behind me, Satan! " our 

*Tyler, Talks to Young People. 



The Problem of Temptation. 309 

life grows luminous with the benedictions of God. The 
Father smiles on us, for of us as conquering sons he is 
well pleased. All heaven comes down our souls to fill, for 
we are now in the battalions that will soon be ordered to 
the heights to greet the Commander. In the moments of 
our victory we receive our vision of Christ, and the earth 
after that can never be the same. When we triumph we 
know it is not by the might or power of a man, but by the 
Spirit that worketh in us and through us, and thenceforth 
through our life we walk with the Spirit with conquering 
tread, for with him we have daily fellowship, and with our 
hand in his we know that, though we stumble, we shall not 
fall. 



THE WONDERFUL TENANT OF 
THE BUILDING. 



Man is the highest product of his own history. The discoverer finds nothing 
so grand or so tall as himself, nothing so valuable to him. The greatest star 
is that at the little end of the telescope — the star that is looking ; not looked 
after, nor looked at. — Theodore Parker, 

The cry of the human soul after God, and its restlessness until it finds him, 
is because of its intrinsic oneness with him. God is the counterpart and com- 
plement of humanity. Man is like a discordant musical instrument until he 
comes into recognized unison with his Maker. — Henry Wood, " God's Image 
in Man." 

Character — individual, social, or political — without Christ is a vain and 
destructive imagination. There is no genuine morality that is not the out- 
fruit of the inflowing Christ-life. Self-righteous7iess is atheism — in the soul, 
in the market, in the Church, in the State. Whatsoever part of our lives, 
whatsoever sphere of human activity, is not vitalized with the Christ, and bap- 
tized with his redemptive purpose, belongs to the waste of the universe, to be 
consumed in the quenchless flame of God's passionate purity. — George D. 
Herron, " The Larger Christ." 

There is a generous unrest in youth, a grand discontent, ever pressing it 
on to higher things ; which regards nothing as too high, which despises ob- 
stacles, and which is inspirited more than discouraged by difficult undertakings. 
This self-assurance, this fiery courage, is given for a good purpose — for the 
bold, great deeds of the world are done by young men. Beautiful indeed is 
this soul daring ; and yet, high as is the inspiration of youth, Christian faith 
comes in early as an attempering power, as a calm voice from above, speak- 
ing truth to the soul, guiding its efforts by a higher wisdom and love, telling it 
where its real force lies, bidding it not be disheartened by failure, softening its 
impetuous fire, touching with a firmer strength its ardent courage, revealing 
to it the eternal principles of right and duty, making it know what success is, 
making it know that, while Christ calls for all its energies, the highest activi- 
ties may coexist with a quiet and gentle spirit. —James M. Hoppin, " Ser- 
mons, on Faith, Hope, and Love." 



CHAPTER VI. 
THE WONDERFUL TENANT OF THE BUILDING. 

The Whence and Whither of the Tenant. 

MAN is more than a body. Man is more than a surpris- 
ing intelligence. Even the moral nature is not the 
crown of his powers. Man is a spirit. His spiritual 
powers are the crown of his being. The spiritual man is 
the real man. The spiritual man is the eternal man. 

Every other power, faculty, sense, endowment, is his, 
but as servants to this higher form of his existence. His 
body is but to temple his spirit. The provision of God for 
his body is but to maintain that temple in complete repair. 
His social structure or nature is but to afford windows and 
doors through which his spirit may shed forth its radiance 
in cheering and blessing every passer-by. God's provision 
for the development and equipment of the social nature of 
man is his provision that all the righteous pleasurable 
desires of man shall be made to serve the higher and eter- 
nal interests of the spirit. The mind of the man is but to 
serve as the vehicle by which the spirit may receive and 
transmit its wondrous revelations and visions of eternal 
truth and righteousness. The provision of God for the 
mind is his provision for the perfecting and equipment of 
the necessary apparatus for the perception and understand- 
ing of himself and his purpose and will. The chief pur- 
pose of mind is the discovery of God and of the will of 
God, and this not for its own sake, but that the spirit which 
it serves may be in constant communion with God. God 
discovered, it then becomes the mission of mind to serve 
the spirit as it seeks to proclaim to other spirits the won- 

313 



314 The Eternal Building. 

ders of its discoveries. The moral nature of man is the 
bodyguard of the spirit in the world. It is a servant that 
has power to bless or to curse. The life of its master is in 
its hands. God's provision for the moral nature is a pro- 
vision for the cure of all its perverted powers; that cured, 
it may serve the spirit unto all holiness of daily living, and 
keep bright before the eyes of the spirit the assurance of 
eternal existence in righteousness. 

When we speak of the spiritual nature of man we do not 
mean by that a mere part of the man, a faculty or a sense, 
as we do when we speak of the physical, social, intellec- 
tual, or moral nature of man, but we mean his real, essen- 
tial life. Man is a spirit. He is more than clay. He is 
more than mind. You cannot get the measure of a man 
by any measurements of his body, or his sociability, or his 
intelligence, or his uprightness, or lack of it. There is a 
spirit in man, and that spirit is the real, the essential man; 
for that spirit all the faculties and powers of the man exist. 
His they are and him they serve, for the spirit has a 
mighty mission in the world, and these faculties and 
powers are the servants through which the spirit expresses 
itself and performs its task. 

We have spent so much of our strength and wit in the 
past in the consideration of man's body that we have 
at this late day of the world's history but begun to take 
account of the spirit. When we speak of the spirit most 
folks think of a ghost, but there is nothing ghostly about 
the spirit that indwells in man. The reign of the spirit is 
not a thing for the heavenly life alone; the reign, the 
mastery of the spirit must be made manifest in the life 
that now is, or we will never enter into future blessedness. 
Man is a spirit now; he does not await death to become 
such. Spirituality, life by the spirit in the Spirit, is not a 
thing that can be thrust upon us at death; it is the essence 
and the fullness of the only true life here in this world. 



The Whence and Whither of the Tenant. 315 

The real man is invisible to human sight. The old phi- 
losopher at Athens who trudged through the streets with a 
lighted candle at noonday in quest of a man was just fool 
enough to go on a goose chase, for men are not thus to be 
discovered. You have never seen a man in your life; 
neither have I. I have seen many of the houses in which 
men dwell. I knew they were at home by the light that 
came through their eye-windows. I knew whether they were 
glad, sad, mad, grieved, anxious, hopeful or hopeless, in 
fear or in pain, by the mysterious reflections which these 
mental processes throw upon the mirror of the face. They 
have opened the doors of their lips and let their thoughts 
pass out, and I, by opening the side doors of my dwelling, 
have received their thought. Thus we have talked and 
questioned and communed together, and it was ourselves 
that held communion, yet never have we seen each other. 
Never once have I doubted that they really did exist, 
though I saw them not, and they have not the least doubt 
that I exist. I know by my own consciousness that I am, 
and in some measure what I am ; so by observation I 
know that they are, and by reflection I grasp that we are, 
essentially alike. Thus I come to know myself and to 
know them. I am not long in discovering that my dwell- 
ing is more than a dwelling; it is a machine as well — one 
wondrously adapted to perform the numberless duties 
that my existence makes necessary, as well as to gratify 
my longings for enjoyment. "I command it to take me 
about the world and show me things. I want to see 
Europe, or Asia, or Africa, and I cannot go without being 
carried. And if I could go without being carried, it would 
do me no good, for I have been so adjusted that I need 
the machine not simply to transport me from place to 
place, but to enable me to see and communicate with ob- 
jects about me. I must always, while I live in this world, 
have it with me, and, fortunately, cannot leave it behind 



316 The Eternal Building. 

(or forget it). I command it, and it moves, walks, runs to 
do my bidding, wears itself out for me. To save it weari- 
ness I invent coaches, sleighs, steamships, railroads, and 
other modes of conveyance, and set it to work to make 
them carry it about, and bring me with more speed and 
ease on my journeys. It is my slave — sometimes an expen- 
sive servant indeed, for I have to take care of it and keep it 
in order. It cannot think for itself; I must keep watch for 
it, clothe, feed, coddle, and doctor it, or it will speedily run 
to ruin. I want some delicate work executed — a deft 
piece of art, an exact piece of mechanism, writing, paint- 
ing, sculpture, wheels pivoted in diamonds, a mill, or a 
steamship — anything. I command the machine, and it 
obeys me — enters upon the work, and prosecutes it to the 
end. But it will not move except as I move, it any more 
than a file or chisel. In fact, it cannot stir without my 
command. I watch it, and put power into it, and when it 
comes to the delicate touch, if it shakes or trembles, I say, 
'Be steady; do it nicely.' Am I not conscious that I am 
different from the instrument I am commanding and 
using ? Do I not know that I am not the flesh and blood 
that I am controlling ? " * 

There is a spirit in man, and it is distinct from the body. 
Its fashion, its weight, its color, no man can tell, but to 
doubt its existence is madness. Walk the street on a 
winter day, and you know you breathe because your breath 
in a faint vapor precedes you; do you doubt you breathe 
on a summer day because as you walk you have not this 
visible manifestation of the fact ? Did you ever behold, 
or have you ever been able to picture, the fashion, weight, 
or color of thought, memory, fear, faith, love, or hope ? 
Yet you believe in the actuality of all these, do you not ? 
You know that they do exist, yet no man has ever framed 
a definition that will explain them. Thus when we define 

* Bishop Foster, Beyond the Grave. 



The Whence and Whither of the Tenant. 317 

the spirit as a thinking, feeling, willing something we 
know our definition has not explained, but we know, too, 
it has grasped the edges of a reality that is within us. 
More, we have but to observe the workings of this spirit 
for a little while to understand that it is supreme. The 
spirit allows no faculty, sense, or power to sit beside it 
upon the throne of the life. While it is kindly in its 
commands and considerate in its care, it ever keeps the 
scepter in its own hand. 

The fact has now become patent to all thinkers that 
there are two universes, or that, like the world, the universe 
is divided into two hemispheres. One hemisphere is 
material, powerless, inert, and unconscious, though mas- 
sive and magnificent in form and color; the other hemi- 
sphere is spiritual, majestic, and commanding, the realm of 
life, power, and consciousness. It is also a fact that in a 
certain sense each man is of dual structure. There is a 
material man, commanding in figure, beautiful in appear- 
ance, a majestic animal, a companionable brute, a superb 
machine, but he is of the earth, earthy. This is "the 
flesh that profiteth nothing." This is the baser self that 
is built for no other purpose than for service. There is a 
spiritual man, unseen yet masterful. He is not the material 
man glorified. He is not the "old man" made over. He 
is not the animal re-created. He is God manifest in the 
flesh, using the flesh to tabernacle an image of himself. 
It is in the spiritual man we find the image of God. Surely 
we have got beyond the idea that the image of God which 
Revelation as well as aspiration teaches us to find in man 
is to be found in his material structure; that this image of 
God is a matter of two-leggedness, or vertebral structure, 
or facial expression, or height, or weight, or color, or even 
mind power. The kingdom of God is within you; so is the 
image of God ; it is in your spiritual manhood. The 
spiritual man is the divine within us that recognizes its 



318 The Eternal Building. 

sonship to God and lives in the conscious plenitude of 
power which such recognition affords. The material man 
you may slay, but the spiritual man is eternal. Thus it is 
that man lives in two worlds; an under world of bodies — 
the material; an upper world of spirits — the spiritual. The 
one, prone to become earthly, sensual, devilish; the other, 
granting opportunity to become heavenly, chaste, God- 
like. Man is like a steamship, in the depths of which a 
dozen blazing furnaces roar and hiss. Before their fiery 
open mouths half-naked men are busy feeding them, while 
noise and confusion attend the generation of heat and 
power. Now, if there were nothing but furnaces and 
engines, stokers and engineers, what would the outcome 
be ? Let those furnaces continue to roar and those mighty 
engines put forth their strength, let stokers continue to 
crowd in the coal and the engineers continue to seek the 
utmost speed, yet leave the ship entirely to the stokers and 
the engineers, and how long would it be before the good ship 
was wrecked ? Something more is needed. Yonder on 
the bridge is a man. He knows the paths of the sea; if a 
doubt crosses his mind as to the completeness of his 
knowledge or the reliability of his memory, there beneath 
his finger is the chart and there the compass. That man 
rules the ship. By the press of a button or the touch of a 
bell he commands increased or slackened speed, bright or 
banked fires, starboard or port of the helm, and in obedience 
to his command every stoker in the hold, every engineer 
in the engine rooms, every sailor on the deck, sets him- 
self to work to make every crank, shaft, wheel, and 
mighty screw do the bidding of the silent yet commanding 
officer on the bridge. Such is man; his material nature 
are the stokers, engineers, and sailors, without whom 
progress through this life cannot be made, but the spirit is 
the captain on the bridge, commanding all and speeding 
the life whithersoever he will. The material is essential 



The Whence and Whither of the Tenant. 319 

now for the development of the spiritual, even as in the 
growing of wheat there is a stage when the chaff is useful, 
aye, indispensable ; yet, as with the wheat, there comes a 
time when the chaff has served its purpose, and it is then 
burned or blown away, so we may well believe there will 
come a time when the material man, having served well 
the spiritual, will be folded away as no longer necessary, 
and the spiritual man with intensified powers will stretch 
itself to fuller and more perfect life. 

The spiritual man chafes under the limitations of the 
material. All his aspirations lift him to things beyond 
the flesh. Every trial of his spiritual strength assures him 
that he was builded for better things than those that 
merely enhance his material well-being. Every appeal 
that stirs him to noblest effort, to love and hope and pray, 
springs not from his material self, but from his spiritual 
self. Forever and forever his spirit cries with David, " O 
that I had wings! " " An irrepressible and wide-reaching 
something in the spirit of each man seems to impel him to 
triumph over space and time and change. In the ac- 
cumulation of property he would own the whole world. 
A very small portion of land would be adequate to his 
physical needs. But he would add acre to acre till his 
private domain compassed the surface of the whole earth. 
Alexander weeping because there was not another world 
he could get to conquer advertises the immensity and 
illimitability of the human spirit. By the aid of instru- 
ments by which man has augmented and lengthened his 
power of vision he has come upon stars rolling in the im- 
mensity of space to the circle of the thirteenth magnitude. 
He has not been content to look upon the stars in the vast 
depths of space, but he has photographed them, so as to 
behold their faces in his study. Back beyond the dim 
dawn of time, commensurate with the appearance of 
human life on earth, he has gone, to return with the 
21 



320 The Eternal Building. 

chemical, physical, and stratigraphical history of the 
globe. By the aid of steam he has made himself a cos- 
mopolite, and through the application of electricity he has 
made himself ubiquitous. Must we not posit a spirit cor- 
related to the universal to account for this disposition to 
compass all things, to know all things, and to be every- 
where ? The tendency of the human spirit to compass 
and possess universality is seen, too, by its capacity to 
create language, in which it embodies all things, and 
through which it expresses its thought of all things. If 
there had to be separate words for all individual things, 
any but the most limited knowledge would be impossible, 
and such knowledge alone there would be if man were shut 
up to atomic sensations for the data of knowledge. But 
the mind, by its creative, combining power and its active, 
spontaneous insight, forms words which represent not 
only individual things, but classes and species of things. 
Man devises the word oak, and lets it stand for all 
the oaks in the world. He creates the word human- 
ity, and puts into it the whole human race. He coins 
the word vegetable, and uses it to define the whole 
kingdom of plants. Thus he not only goes over the 
world and sees it directly, but he produces language 
manifold and complicated and elastic enough to accom- 
modate and contain the world with all that is in it. 
This makes it possible for him to go round the world 
and see all its wonders without leaving the place of his 
birth. 

"He not only builds for himself the universe in lan- 
guage, so that he can contemplate its moons and meas- 
ure its suns and sail its oceans and climb its mountains in 
the silent precincts of his study, but he avails himself of 
sound and light, also, to give expression to universal ideas. 
He takes a few notes, and so combines and mixes them 
as to be able to touch all the chords of the universal human 



The Whence and Whither of the Tenant. 321 

heart in one song. Michael Angelo put all the theology 
of all the books into the ' Last Judgment. ' " * 

Thus the spirit in man is forever and in all ways reach- 
ing out of its material dwelling, and reaching away from 
the things of this material world to satisfy and employ itself. 
The earth it bounds, and does so with such ease that it knows 
it has not begun to draw upon its power. It compasses 
the material universe, and on the rim of the stellar splendors 
puts the query to the outer circle of flaming orbs: " Is this 
all ? Is this the end of my march ? " then grows exultant 
as, catching the music of the stars as they sing together, 
intimations of unexplored reaches of splendor still beyond, 
burst upon it in enrapturing satisfaction. 

The spirit feels its material dwelling to be a cage, a 
prison, and it longs to be free. There is ever a contest 
between the spirit and the body, between the master and 
the servant. The material self delights itself in animal 
joys; it keeps its eye on the ground, and is content if 
evening shades find its stomach full; the spirit fixes its 
gaze on the stars and tries to peer beyond them to fathom 
the secrets of worlds unknown, and vaguely feels that its 
fullest life is somehow linked with that beyond. The ma- 
terial self is of the world and lives in and with and largely 
for the world ; the spirit with strange yearnings and aspira- 
tions reaches forth for some larger life where it may test 
to the full the mighty powers with which it feels itself en- 
dowed. Now and then before the spirit strange visions 
flit, as memories of lost grandeurs or wondrous possibili- 
ties. "The soul is like a bird caged from the nest, that 
yet remembers something of its fellows in the forest of 
green leaves, and in summer days hears snatches of song 
from far-off fields, and yearns, with all its little life, for 
that liberty which it has never proved, for that companion- 
ship which it so early missed, and for those songs which 

* Lee, The Making of a Man. 



322 The Eternal Building. 

it never learned to utter, though it strives in Droken notes 
for them." * 

The spirit finds nothing in or about the cage to satisfy 
itself. Bread builds a glorious body, but it does not 
satisfy the spirit. Companions cheer, but always fail, and 
the spirit longs for a companionship that will endure. 
Truth feeds gloriously, but when the World Builder is 
found the spirit yearns to become acquainted with him, 
to know him and be known of him. The moral nature 
Tightened longs for more than reformation and re-creation ; 
it would prove its gratitude by service. The spirit yearns; 
it is hungry, it is thirsty; food it must have; where will it 
be found ? What is there that will satisfy the hunger of the 
soul, the thirst of the spirit ? We have found that for every 
hunger of the material man, divine provision, wondrous and 
inexhaustible, has been made. Surely, then, there shall be 
divine provision for the satisfaction of the yearnings of 
the spirit. But where shall it be found ? 

One day as some adventurous hunters crawled along an 
Alpine ledge they discovered an eagle's nest, and robbed 
it of an eaglet. Reaching home, they gave the nestling 
from the crags over to the care of a motherly hen to be 
reared among the fowls. As the young eagle grew he 
would separate himself from the blatant cocks upon the 
dunghill, and with silent dignity walk his way alone. As 
his wings grew they clipped them. One day a hawk cir- 
cled over the barnyard and sent every frightened fowl 
cowering to shelter, but the eagle feared him not; his eye 
flashed with fire as he screamed back a defiant cry, and 
reared himself to fly to battle. But, alas, he could not 
fly. Then he fell sick. He longed to die. He was for- 
gotten. His wings grew strong. All the eagle in him 
longed to soar. Why not ? the sky was his. All the vast 
reach of the exhilarating air, whose paths his fathers 

* Beecher. 



The Whence and Whither of the Tenant. 323 

knew, stretched before him. How he nursed the strength 
of his wings! Then came a summer day when all the 
fowls, like their master, dozed, but the eagle was awake; 
high in the heavens, so high that it appeared as but a 
speck, that only an eagle's eye could discern, there soared 
something that sent forth a cry; it was faint, not a fowl 
heard it; the master did not hear it, but the young eagle 
heard, and sprang erect and stretched its wings, and then 
with all its life beating wildly in its breast it flew. Away 
from the barnyard, away from the fowls, away from the 
master, up and up and up it mounted, over fields and hill and 
mountain and forest, until, with all the powers of its wings 
full used, it found its kind and its liberty right under the 
sun! 

It is thus with the spirit. From out the unseen realm 
where God the Eternal Spirit dwells there comes a voice. 
It speaks one word to every language known, "Come/" 
and the spirit, jubilant and strong, recognizing a won- 
drous kinship between itself and the Spirit, whose voice it 
hears, mounts up as on the wings of eagles, and finds its 
satisfaction and peace and life in God. God in all his 'full- 
ness is the provision for the spiritual nature of man. God 
is a Spirit, and in him our spirit lives and moves and has 
its being. God is the absolute Spirit; man is the relative 
spirit, and man comes to himself in God. As the lungs 
are for the reception of the oxygen and ozone from the 
atmosphere for the maintenance and invigoration of the 
physical life, so the spirit is for the reception of that 
flood of the divine presence and power that makes it 
possible for a man to keep the command of his Father, 
and live a life that will imitate the perfectness of the life 
of his Father who is in heaven. God is the answer to 
the hunger of the soul. God is the fountain in which the 
spirit quenches its thirst. In God the eternal man is 
satisfied. 



324 The Eternal Building. 

The Hunger of the Tenant for Love. 

If we now look more closely at the hunger of the spirit, 
we shall find that it expresses itself in two great longings. 
The first of these is a longing for love. For love the 
spirit yearns as a babe for its mother. In the divine pro- 
vision for the redemption and re-creation of the moral na- 
ture of man, man discovers, also, the supply of God for 
this yearning of his spirit for love. Only love could have 
provided such a sacrifice. Only love could stoop so low 
to lift man so high. Only love could give itself in such 
measure as the cross declared. But the moral nature of 
man is not capable of understanding the terrible need of 
its own cleansing, nor of comprehending the measure of 
the atonement. It was the spirit that cried out for the 
cure of the moral nature ; it was the spirit that out of the 
depths of its hunger cried aloud for sympathy, forgiveness, 
reconciliation, and peace; and when in the sacrificial life 
and death of Jesus all these were provided it was the 
spirit that, hearing one word through all those agonies — 
Love — soared into the bosom of God to find rest unto itself. 

You should also grasp the fact that the incarnation of 
Jesus Christ was necessary to our understanding of the 
nature of God, even though that incarnation was not to be 
followed by the cross. In the thought of the Hebrews 
their God was more a Caesar than a Father, and it is to 
be feared that in many minds such a conception of the 
Eternal still remains. After centuries of symbolic teach- 
ing, God as Love was little understood by the Hebrew 
priests, much less by the Hebrew people, and it is much to be 
doubted that our own conception of God would have ad- 
vanced very far beyond theirs had the symbolism been 
continued to this day. A demonstration of the character 
of God was the supreme lesson needed by the race. Love 
must be personified in life, or man would never understand 



The Hunger of the Tenant for Love. 325 

it. The drops of blood that trickled from the wounded 
palms and feet and side of Christ did what the literal 
rivers of blood that ran from the Jewish altars for centuries 
had failed to do. When Jesus said, " God so loved the 
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life," no man understood him, but when he stretched him- 
self upon the cross and the world grew dark, then men 
began to comprehend that Love had dwelt among them. 

In all ages earnest seekers have from the depths of their 
spirit repeated the cry of Moses and Elijah, " Let me be- 
hold Thee." In Jesus the petition was answered. In him 
God expressed himself. In him man beheld the Deity, 
and, lo! he was full of grace and truth. To him man 
pressed with his questions, and for him he named himself 
the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Light of the world ; but 
he had not to name himself with the title of the attribute 
that expresses the perfection of God; he had not to say, 
" I am Love" for men had only to look upon him, to be- 
hold his work, and listen to his words to know that Love, 
supreme Love, faultless and immeasurable, stood among 
them. And when into the ears of the weary children of 
men he who was Love whispered, Come, and bring your bur- 
dens, and I will bear them; come, ye maimed, and I will 
heal thee; come, ye halt, and thou shalt walk; come, ye 
blind, and thou shalt see; come, ye deaf, and thou shalt 
hear; come, ye dumb, and thou shall praise; come, ye 
withered, and thou shalt grow young; come, ye sick, and 
thou shalt be made well ; come, ye demoniac, and thy 
devils shall be expelled; come, ye dead, and thou shalt 
live — and, coming, it was done unto them even as he had 
said — they knew that at last they had found a lover of their 
bodies. But when he spoke to them as never other man 
spoke to men, and proclaimed the constitution of a won- 
derful spiritual kingdom he came to found, and besought 



326 The Eternal Building. 

them to enter it, they knew that they had found not only 
a lover of their bodies, but that he, the Wonderful, was the 
lover of their souls! 

In Jesus Christ love expressed itself in fullest measure. 
His life furnishes the biography of love. His is the only 
absolutely unselfish life that has been lived among men. 
In him love without measure is seen. When after his as- 
cension the apostles declared that God is Love men could 
understand them as for four millenniums men had not un- 
derstood. God is Love; Love is God; Love works as 
Christ worked ; God is as Christ was, for Christ was and 
is God. Thus the infinite yearning of the spirit of man to 
understand God was answered. Love stood forth, and men 
beheld not the stern, almost forbidding aspect of a Caesar, 
but the intense, sympathetic desire of a Father. The 
Eternal, the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, 
the Creator of worlds and the Maker of all men, he was 
just and righteous and true, but he was also Love, and 
love tempered all his dealings with his children. When 
men looked into the heart of Christ and beheld his love 
for them, and then heard him declare that even as he 
loved them so the Father loved them, their idea of God 
grew fast, and the hungry spirit fed on manna more sat- 
isfying than angel's food. And so it has been through the 
ages. The spirit of man yearning for love has found that 
for which he longed in God, not only in Christ, but in Christ 
as the revealer of the Father, for the Son came not to do his 
own will, but the will of the Father, who through the sac- 
rifice of his best Beloved would bring all his wandering chil- 
dren back to his heart and his home. Let us not forget in 
our rejoicing for the love of Christ to us that the Father 
loveth us, aye, that the love of the Father is expressed to us 
in Christ Jesus our Lord. The love of the Father for us was 
not caused by the sacrifice of Christ, but caused it. 
Through the opened arteries of the heart of Christ God 



The Hunger of the Tenant for Love. 327 

poured out upon us in conquering fullness the love for us 
which he had treasured from all eternity. It is not the 
full truth to say that God the Son loved us and gave him- 
self for us; the full measure of the truth is that God the 
Triune loved us, and in Christ suffered for our redemption, 
and this love of the Triune for us is the answer to the 
hunger of our spirit. The love which matches and sup- 
plies the hunger of our spirit was embodied in Christ for 
our easier comprehension. This love cannot be measured, 
but, blessed fact, it can be enjoyed. To the Beloved as 
the reservoir in whom the great love of the Triune is 
stored for us we can go, and there our hunger is appeased, 
our thirst quenched, our soul revives, and we find that in 
God there is fullness of joy for evermore. 

Remember, this love which is the answer to the hunger of 
the spirit is not an it; you cannot get it. This love is God, 
and if you would possess and enjoy love, you must possess 
him. When you analyze the hunger of the spirit its yearn- 
ings prove to be yearnings for God. God is a spirit, and 
he is the author of our spirit; our essential life is linked 
with the life of God, and our hunger is the craving of the 
spirit to supply its need at the source of its existence. 
Hence, though you seek every whither, you will not find 
satisfaction until you seek God. Your spirit is built for 
God as your body is built for the fruit of the field. Your 
spirit is built to exercise itself in God as the wing of the 
bird is built to exercise itself in the air and the fin of the 
fish built to exercise itself in the sea. Without God you 
can do nothing — so declares the holy word; without find- 
ing God you cannot live your best self — so declares the 
hunger of your spirit. Without God you cannot have 
peace, joy, nor satisfying life; without him you cannot be 
a full-grown man nor live a full-orbed life. The man 
who tries to live without God tries to live without exercis- 
ing the best part of himself, and only hideous failure can 



328 The Eternal Building. 

result. To live well you must live in God; you must live 
in love; aye, to live well you must live as God lives. We 
are made in the image of God. The wonder of this sur- 
prises us, but the meaning of it must surely be that our 
spiritual nature is builded after the plan of the nature of 
God; that in our spirit there is an identity of quality, though 
not of quantity with our Creator; and to live well is to let 
this identity of our life with that of God shine forth in in- 
creasing splendor through the completeness of our union 
with God. 

Seek not for love expecting to find it in man or earth 
or heaven; you will find love only in God, for it is he. Yet, 
even as love became incarnate in Jesus Christ for the good 
of men, so love would become incarnate in you for the 
same purpose. The yearning of our spirit for love proves 
not only that we are capable of being loved, but that we 
are capable of loving. God desires our love; he yearns for 
it as we do for his; aye, infinitely more; and when we do 
give him our love he realizes that it is hard for us, taberna- 
cled in the flesh, to express our love in such a way as will 
satisfy our own hearts that we are proving to him the 
measure of our love for him; so in his infinite wisdom he 
has devised a way by which we can prove our love to him 
by serving as the messengers of his love to others. By 
this service the identity in quality of our spirit with God is 
emphasized, for love leads us to sacrifice, as love led God 
in Christ to sacrifice. The cross revealed the pent-up love 
of God, and when we are ready to take up our cross and 
pour ourselves out for others we reveal our likeness to 
God. The measure of our self-sacrifice will measure our 
identity with God. As we give we live; self-dethroned is 
God enthroned, and God enthroned is love going forth to 
conquer, even though the way to the victory leads through 
a garden to a cross and a tomb. The world yearns for a 
present-day revelation of love, and God would through us 



The Hunger of the Tenant for Love. 329 

answer that yearning. When we who have found God, and 
in him live and move and have our being, go forth God 
goes forth; by our self-surrender to God we are enabled 
to go forth and give him, not ourselves, to the world. 
When we go forth love goes forth, for love dwells in us 
for this holy purpose; if, then, as we go forth no cross con- 
fronts us, we may well question the reality of our discovery 
of God or of our surrender to him. While sin and want 
abound grace must prove its presence by its abounding 
sacrifice and self-giving, for the continuing wonder of the 
plan of salvation — God's provision for the building of eter- 
nal men — is that no other way is provided for grace to 
manifest itself in soul-saving interest than through the lives 
of consecrated men and women. God there is, but it is 
only when men let the light that dwells within them shine 
forth that other men behold the glory of God and are 
drawn to serve him. Christ there is, but it is only as he is 
lifted up by his enthronement within a man that he can 
draw all men unto him, and, throwing his arms about the 
lost ones, whisper his cheer in their ears. Holy Spirit there 
is, but it is only when he dwells within the temple of a 
man, and through that man, as one endued with might by 
the Spirit in his inner man, works, that he wins his won- 
drous victories. God to-day, as in Christ's day, reveals 
himself through a man. Love to-day, as in Christ's day, 
manifests itself in sacrifice, for such the world still needs. 
If you are not ready to take up your cross and follow 
Christ even unto death, you are none of his; union with 
God you can never enjoy; life in and with God is not yours; 
and the lengths and breadths and heights and depths of 
love you will never know. To stretch yourself with Christ 
on the cross of self-sacrifice for the good of man is the 
supreme privilege that God accords to you, that you may 
prove the measure of your love to him in return for his 
boundless love to you. To suffer together with Christ is 



330 The Eternal Building. 

the glorious proof of one's likeness to Christ that God 
allows a man to manifest that the- image of himself in him 
may be patent to the gaze of men. To love as Christ 
loved, to love when we are shamed and hissed for loving, 
to love the foul until they become pure, to love our foes 
until they become the friends of God, to love until we die 
for loving, and die for those who reject our love— this is to 
become Christlike. This is what it is to be transformed 
from an earthly into a heavenly man by the indwelling of 
God. This is how we are changed into the same image 
from glory to glory as that borne by the Lord our Sav- 
iour. 

To live such a life is the desire of God for every one 
of us. For such a life he has builded us. Of such sacri- 
fice our spirit is capable when it has found the supply of 
its own yearnings in God. To attain unto the stature of 
the fullness of Christ is the glorious possibility that is 
within our reach. This is the prize that is set before us. 
Strive, man, strive; this prize is worth your utmost effort. 
Behold the measure God gives of man, and fail not in 
striving to meet his expectation of yourself. Christ is 
God's ideal of a man, and such a man it is his desire to 
make of you by your surrender to his indwelling. The 
God-indwelt man is the only Christlike man, and the 
Christlike man is the only perfect man. You must find 
God if you would find your best self; you must live in 
God if you would live well ; you must be for God and for 
humanity a Christ continued in the world, or you miss 
the high purpose of God concerning you. You are defi- 
cient in manhood until you become sufficiently trans- 
formed by the indwelling of love to image God to the 
world. 

The Power of Love. 

Behold the power of love! A carpenter dies. The 
world sees no honor in his death, but the shame of it is in 



The Power of Love. 331 

all their eyes, for he dies in the accursed way upon a 
cross, crucified between thieves. While the few friends 
of his life forsake him a multitude of his foes gather to 
jeer and howl their derision and contempt. While they 
jeer his life goes out, and the desire to care for the body 
of one they loved brings a few of his friends once more 
together. They talk about his wondrous life and words. 
They spread abroad his strange doctrines. True to the 
commission he gave them, they preach forgiveness of sin 
through faith in his name. Though the sword is lifted 
against them, they cease not in their testimony. From 
one end of the little world of that age to the other they 
hasten with their message. It is a message for which the 
hearts of men are hungry. Disciples, most of them like 
the great Teacher, coming from a humble home, are won. 
The work spreads. The fire runs. Saints arise. Saints 
die, but their death only increases the number of the 
saints. Stephen, steadfastly looking unto heaven as the 
pile of stones that pelt him to his death increases about 
him, is transfigured before his persecutors, and sends Saul 
away with a sting in his heart that leaves it never. James 
gives his head that he may prove his devotion to his 
brother's cause. Paul surrenders his mighty intellect to 
the hated One, and outleads all others in the intensity of 
his devotion and the intrepidity and zeal of his service. 
These early disciples, nearly every one, suffer terrible deaths 
as the seal of their fidelity, but ere they die they write 
down the truth for which they are willing to die, and the 
ages are blessed with the great inheritance. Forward 
marches the progress of the movement so strangely begun 
in shame. The culture of Greece and the power of Rome 
pale before it, and the day comes when the cross of the 
Despised and Rejected of men becomes the one hope of a 
great emperor for his triumph, and the eagles of Rome 
bow to the Lamb that was slain. From that day the 



332 The Eternal Building. 

cross has never been absent from the council chamber of 
the greatest nations of the world. 

But persecution has never sheathed its sword. From 
the catacombs of Rome, where early heroes lived and 
died; from the fastnesses of the Italian Alps, where Wal- 
densian martyrs maintained the faith delivered to the 
saints ; from the fertile fields of Bohemia, where the 
friends of Hus gave themselves with him to the flames; 
from the dungeons of Spain, where the Inquisition wrought 
its horrors and made forever execrable the name of the 
papacy; from the dykes of Holland, where the Beghards 
stood for God and the defenders of Leyden immortalized 
themselves; from the moors of England, where Bloody 
Mary kindled the fire that consumed the noblest of her 
bishops and the truest of her peasants; from the firths of 
Scotland, where the rising tides were made to engulf the 
daughters of the heather ; from the peat bogs of Ulster, 
where yawning graves inclosed living mothers and their 
babes ; from the hillsides around Ararat, where Armenian 
martyrs now rot unburied where Turkish butchers stretched 
them ; from the rude huts of Madagascar, where new 
converts fall beneath the land-hungry sword of the French 
— from the history of every nation and isle of the sea 
the same story comes. For love of Christ we die. There 
is no earthly compulsion leading to such death; the world 
offers them its best to renounce and live, but love con- 
straineth them, and for him whom having not seen they 
love they are ready to lay them down and die. The king- 
dom that was begun in the earth by the crucifixion of its 
King makes progress only by the same path. The blood 
of the martyrs fertilizes the soil of the world for the 
growth of the kingdom of God. That kingdom has grown 
until to-day its power is felt unto the uttermost parts of 
the earth. Isles of the sea waited for its coming, and 
when it came rejoiced and were glorified. The kingdoms 



The Power of Love. 333 

of the world are more and more becoming the kingdoms 
of him who was slain, and unto him has that gathering of 
the people begun that is the earnest of the time when 
unto him every knee shall bow, and the voice of the people 
of every kindred and tribe and nation shall be heard pro- 
claiming him to be the King of kings and Lord of lords. 

Behold the power of love! The Despised has become 
the Glorified of all men; the Rejected has become the 
Corner-stone and Capstone of the kingdom that is to 
endure eternally. The world boasts of conquerors — Alex- 
ander, Caesar, Hannibal, Tamerlane, Charlemagne, Fred- 
erick, Napoleon; the last and greatest of these himself 
paid the tribute of all the world conquerors to him of the 
cross when he exclaimed: " Alexander, Caesar, Charle- 
magne, and I myself have founded great empires; but 
upon what did these creations of our genius depend ? 
Upon force. Where are they to-day? Gone; and only 
their memory survives them. Jesus alone founded his 
empire upon love, and to this day millions would die for 
him." 

The kingdom of God itself bears the roll of many illus- 
trious, glorious names of those who have wrought for its 
uprearing. There is John the divine, Peter the thunderer, 
Paul the peerless, Apollos the silver-tongued, Chrysostom 
the heroic, Polycarp the ready, a Kempis the mystic, Wyc- 
lif the disturber, Hus the dauntless, Luther the reformer, 
Melanchthon the creed builder, Calvin the theologian, Knox 
the nation shaker, Bunyan the seer, Butler the subtle, Bax- 
ter the saint, Whitefield the revivalist, Wesley the singer 
and Wesley the reorganizer, Edwards the awakener, Fin- 
ley the evangelist, and Spurgeon the soul saver ; but all 
these, with the host of unnamed leaders for whom they 
stand, lay all their trophies down before the Christ whose 
service made them great. They are naught, and he is all. 
Erect stands Chrysostom before the Caesars when they 



334 The Eternal Building. 

persecute, but on his knees he falls to look on Christ. 
Luther faces diets and councils and bows not before any 
of earth, but tenders all the homage of his devotion to the 
majesty of the Unseen. Knox brings kings and queens 
and courtiers trembling to their knees before him, but 
does so only after he has himself been on his knees before 
this wondrous One. Wesley transforms England and 
gives a new impetus to holy living, but unto this Lowly 
One become the Exalted renders all the praise. 

This is the surprise of love. The men who have wrought 
most successfully for the well-being of the nations declare 
before men and angels that not unto them, but unto the 
Christ who bought them with his own blood and to whose 
service they gave themselves under the mighty constraint 
of love, unto him and unto him alone belongeth all the 
praise for the wonders accomplished. For rights and 
honors among themselves they might contend, but unto 
him whom they serve because of the blessed consciousness 
that he loved them and gave himself for them they give 
all honor. The most truly great of the world's history for 
nineteen hundred years, its chief benefactors, reformers, 
and liberators, have all traced the motive that prompted 
them to their endeavor to that cross on which the hissed at 
and spit upon gave up his life. His love for them nerved 
him for his death; their love for him nerved them for their 
lives of labor. 

The likeness of men to God is seen in the likeness of 
the effects when such love as Christ poured out for men 
is poured out by his followers for their fellows. The 
brightest chapter of the world's story is the chapter that re- 
cords the conquests of love. These are mightier by far than 
those of the sword. If you do not know them, set yourself 
to work to study them; they are the evangels of the good 
time that hastens on. The love that Paul poured into the 
heart of Onesimus made the slave a saint. The love of 



The Power of Love. 335 

Augustine of Canterbury made possible a God-serving 
English race. The love of Patrick made the former days 
of Erin more fragrant than her latter days. The love of 
Brainard and Elliot proved long before the " century of 
dishonor " opened that the good Indian was the Christ- 
saved Indian. The love of Cox and Livingstone and 
Moffat and Crowther and Comber and Hannington has 
brought the dawn of the Light of the world to Darkest 
Africa. The love of Morrison and Griffith and Gilmour 
and a host of worthy successors has inaugurated a move- 
ment that shall not end until the countless millions of the 
Celestial Empire shall own the Celestial King as the adored 
of all their hearts. The love of Carey and Lynch and 
Duff and Heber and Butler continued to be poured out by 
those who have been ready to take up their arduous tasks, 
has opened the heart of India's millions to the truth as it is in 
Jesus, and brought the learning and skill and philanthropy 
of Christendom to the succor of the caste-cursed land. 
The love of Judson ushered in a new age of the world for 
Burmah; the love of Neesima awoke the enthusiasm of the 
new Japan ; the love of Martyn was as ointment poured 
forth in Persia; the love of Calvert made men of the 
beasts of Tonga and the Fiji; the love of Williams writes 
the twenty-ninth chapter of the Acts of the apostles in the 
hearts of the dwellers in Polynesia; the love of Patteson 
breaks down all opposition and works wonders in Melane- 
sia; the love of Bingham and Thurston wins the Hawaiians 
from darkness into light, and the love of the still living 
Paton transforms the New Hebrides from the abode of 
cannibals to the habitation of saints. The love of Fox 
and Benezet and Sharp and Wilberforce and Garrison and 
Phillips and Brown and Douglass and Harriet Stowe and 
Julia Howe and Abraham Lincoln gave a race their free- 
dom. The love of Howard and Buxton and Jebb and 

Elizabeth Fry revolutionized the treatment of prisoners, 

22 



336 The Eternal Building. 

and gave them opportunity to come forth from imprisonment 
with at least sound bodies. The love of Octavia Hill and 
George Peabody brought hope into the crowded tenement 
districts of London and thence to all great cities. The love 
of Florence Nightingale and Mother Bickerdyke and their 
sisters in Christlike ministering brought the vision of angels 
to thousands of sick and dying soldiers. The love of Cath- 
erine Booth and Lord Shaftesbury led many a sin-stained 
wanderer from the slums to purity and a home. The love 
of Gough and Finch and Dow led many from the slavery 
of the cup to the power and cleanness of abstinence. 

But space would fail to tell of those in all walks of life 
who have poured themselves out for the good of the race 
and the alleviation of the ills of humanity: Physicians who 
have calmly looked death in the eyes, and with pencil in hand 
traced down to the next to the last pulsation the symp- 
toms of dissolution, that they might hand down, for the 
cure of men, a correct diagnosis of disease; or who have 
stood at their post when pestilence wasted at noonday and 
at midnight; scientists who have suffered blinding, deafen- 
ing, maiming, and even crossed the river of death, in pur- 
suit of knowledge that, transmitted, might prove the bless- 
ing of all future ages; philosophers who have spent their 
strength and wasted their flesh and their substance in the 
well-nigh thankless task which yet enriched the intelli- 
gence of the world with priceless discoveries in the realm 
of pure thought; statesmen who, forsaking the pleasures of 
home and intellectual treasure-gathering, or turning their 
backs upon enticing lures from the business world, have 
yet given themselves to the conduct of the world affairs 
so much shirked by their fellow-men; warriors who, like 
Horatio at the bridge, Winkelried at Sempach, Somers at 
Tripoli, the forlorn hope at Petersburg, Hobson at Santi- 
ago, rush into the arms of death, that the sacrifice of one 
might work the saving of many. 




FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. 



"The Angel of the Crimea." 

" If you have caused one tear the less 
Down Sorrow's cheek to flow ; 

If you have caused one smile the more 
On any face to glow ; 

Then, friend, you have not lived in vain." 



The Power of Love. 337 

Love ever has and ever will find a way to express itself, 
and love is the carver of the truest fame. If you would 
be remembered, carve your name deep in the life of your 
age, write it bold on the hearts of your fellow-men, and 
you will live in the esteem of the noblest when Egyptian 
pyramids and obelisks, no matter whither transported, are 
forgotten. il There is no sight so sublime, no beauty so 
enthralling, no influence so subtle in operation and meas- 
ureless in results, no power so resistless, as that of a 
human life wholly consecrated to God. The most splen- 
did and authoritative institutions of men are toys com- 
pared to the pure-hearted child of God who has seen the 
divine meanings of things, and yielded all his powers to 
the absolute sway of the eternal realities. He who is 
great enough to put the kingdoms of the world and all 
their glory behind him rather than forfeit one tittle of 
his birthright as a son of God; who falters not in the 
face of the darkest mysteries of life, and drinks deep of 
its sorrows, that he may have fellowship with God; who 
dares to be led from day to day by his divine instincts 
without anxiety for the morrow ; whose communion with 
God is so close and unbroken that prayer is his soul's at- 
mosphere ; whose religious knowledge is not the traditions 
of men, but the word of God in his inmost being; who 
speaks what he hears God speak, and does the works he 
sees God doing — such a man, soever humble though he be, 
is the real maker of civilizations, the divine reformer of 
nations, the eternal worker of righteousness. God has 
provided and man has discovered no greater force to 
work out the redemption of the race than that of the 
wholly unselfish life that seeketh not its own. It is not 
with institutions and formulas so much as with men that 
God unfolds his own life in the development of human- 
ity — men in whom he can have his own loving and 
righteous way, men with a faith as insuppressible as light, 



338 The Eternal Building. 

men who are incarnations of his drawing sacrificial 
love."* 

For such men the world groans; for such men God 
waits; through such men he would still the groaning of a 
love-hungry race by such a wondrous giving of himself 
through his consecrated children as would supply all their 
need and make the earth to blossom and bloom with all 
the fruits and joys of righteousness. Think not that such 
a life is one of abiding gloom, tears, and woe. These are 
here, but not in their merely earthly meaning. These are 
not all there is in such a life, by any means. The spirit 
that is at peace with God and is used of God to express 
the divine love to men, like the Master himself, has meat 
to eat that the world knows not of. Such living is the 
one true and satisfying method of living. It is the con- 
quering way to live. Such living makes even torture, 
rack, flame, or gibbet a cause of rejoicing, and sings joy- 
fully all the day long. It was such living that enabled 
Cranmer to sing as he kept the word of his heroism, and 
pushed into the flames, to be the first of his members con- 
sumed, the hand that penned his vacillating recantings. 
The call of the Spirit of God to the spirit of men is just 
such a call as that with which Garibaldi recruited the 
army of Italy: "Come! I offer you terrible fatigue, long 
marches, scant rations, hard fighting, wounds, disease, 
death; but I offer you liberty and VICTORY! " 

Just this is the call of God. There are fatigue and fight- 
ing and death; but there are communion and joy and peace 
and liberty and victory all along the way, and their fruits 
endure through all eternity. 

The Thirst of the Tenant for Power. 

The second or allied yearning of the spirit of man is a 
yearning for power. All the race of men are in love with 

* Herron, A Plea for the Gospel. 



The Thirst of the Tenant for Power. 339 

prowess. Man longs to accomplish things, and doffs his 
cap to those who do accomplish things. Power is prized 
everywhere, and is sought by all men. When the man 
of the early age stretched his loin cloth or mantle between 
two sticks to catch the breath of the sweeping wind he 
was praying for power and gaining it, and his little boat 
speeding over the wave while he dared to rest his tired 
muscles gave him an infinite delight. When his brother 
discovered that the neck of the ox and the horse was built 
for a yoke, and hitching a drag to them, he gathered up 
his feet and sat down on them, while the power of the ox 
or the horse took him whither he would go, he began to 
think that life might be worth the living, after all. Power 
is enjoyable. To possess or to be able to use power makes 
a fellow feel good. Men were a long time in discovering 
that power could be found outside the muscles of their 
bodies or those of their horses and oxen, or outside the 
muscles of the wind. Then some power-hungry genius 
discovered that there was power in the water of the little 
brook that purled along through the meadow; that you 
had only to pull the wheel off your cart and flatten its 
spoke and let the water of the brook fall on it steadily, and 
around it would go. How simple! Power is always simple 
after you have found it. 

But all the world did not live beside water courses, and the 
dry-land dwellers needed power too; so one of their wise- 
acres borrowed a water wheel from his brother, flattened 
it out a bit more, set it up in the air, and, lo ! the wind was 
found to have other muscles, and the windmill increased 
man's grasp on power and enabled him to do his work 
more easily. For centuries this remained the extent of 
man's grasp on power. But at last Watt really beheld a 
kettle boil, and it got into his head that one reason why 
there were so much wood and coal in the world was that 
there was so much water that God meant to be boiled. 



340 The Eternal Building. 

for boiling it would put seven-league boots on all creation. 
Obedient to his vision, Watt entered on his tremendous 
task of boiling all the water in the world and harnessing 
its steam, and it was not long ere he could say to the sea, 
There shall be no more calm; and to the milestones, Thou 
shalt frighten and discourage man no more. A mile a 
minute only whetted the ambition of the power searchers. 
Audacious man, having made the fires of the forests and 
of the mountains subservient to him, now gripped the fires 
of the skies, hitched the lightning to his chariot and swan- 
boat, then buttoned it to his lips and to his ears, and, lo! 
distance was annihilated, and the grasp of man on power 
seemed well-nigh complete. 

Mark, in gaining all this increase of power man created 
nothing. He only discovered and applied forces that were 
from the beginning of the world present in the world. No 
doubt, if we could have heard the conversation of the im- 
mortals as the news of man's discoveries flew to them, we 
would have heard Adam and Hiram and Archimedes ex- 
claiming, "Why in the world didn't we think of that?" 
The great forces that do our bidding; that throb across 
continents and under seas with our messages ; that speed 
the freight of our cheer and comfort from the world's end 
to the world's end ; that bear us with amazing swiftness to 
dying kindred, and marriage gatherings, and waiting audi- 
ences, and world-ingathering conventions — these forces 
serve us only and so long as we submit to the laws of their 
operation. They obey us only as far as we obey them, and 
when we do obey them there seems no limit to the power 
they will intrust to us. There is every reason to suppose 
that the coming century will have as many surprises for us 
in the discovery and application of power as the century now 
closing. The craving of man for power in the material 
world is by no means satisfied, and that craving is the pre- 
cursor of still more mighty discoveries. 



The Thirst of the Tenant for Power. 341 

But the spiritual man is not fed by these increases of 
power that come to the material man; they rather intensify 
his hunger for spiritual power that will be commensurate 
with the new needs of the world and with his increased 
facilities for cursing or blessing the race. The spiritual 
man is as ambitious as the material man to perform mighty 
deeds, and rightly so. To desire to be made the medium 
through whom the utmost blessing shall come to the world 
is a Godlike desire, and it is not only the privilege but the 
duty of the spiritual man to covet the best gift, that he 
may be thoroughly furnished for the performance of such 
holy exploits as will prove that God is still at work in his 
world. 

The more the spiritual man loves the more intense will 
become his yearning for power, for only by his reception 
and use of power will he be able to evidence the love that 
swells in his heart. The spiritual man rejoices when he 
hears the command from the lips of his Redeemer : ' ' Follow 
me. Run to and fro through the earth carrying my bless- 
ings every whither," and he longs to obey. He beholds his 
Saviour touching the lips of the dumb, anointing the eyes 
of the blind, gently tapping the ears of the deaf, whisper- 
ing words of cheer to the downhearted, loving the fallen 
into purity, and taking time to speak the word in season to 
the lonely woman of Sychar and the soul hungry Nico- 
demus ; he stands beside the Multiplier as the loaves and 
fishes so wondrously increase, and rejoices to be counted 
worthy to serve as a distributor of the Lord's great bounty ; 
his spirit grows hot for holy service as he listens with the 
eager-faced multitude to the glorious principles of the new 
kingdom of God ; he feels the thrill of celestial glory as 
on Tabor's heights transfiguring splendors enswathe the 
form of the Nazarene; and as there Jesus says: " Follow 
me. Do as I do. Continue thou my ministry to the world, " 
the spirit cries: "I will. I will." 



342 The Eternal Building. 

But neither the life of Jesus nor of any of his disciples 
is all a Tabor, and as he who on Tabor cries, "My 
Jesus, I love thee ; I will love those thou lovest ; I will be 
thy hands and feet and voice and heart to needy man," 
comes down to the plain, he finds that the celestial glories 
have given place to diabolical horrors, and he who was 
face to face with God, and there was brave, comes now 
face to face with Satan, and Satan in frenzied rage froths 
and foams through the lips of a lad and seeks to tear and 
rend him. What will he do ? What can he do ? God he 
loves as much as ever; man he longs to serve for Christ's 
sake as much as ever, but face to face with that demoniac 
he realizes that something more than love is needed. 
Satan is past being loved into good behavior ; only the 
strong arm of power can restrain him or cast him forth 
from those into whom he has entered ; and the unre- 
corded prayer of the apostles in the presence of the Satan- 
possessed lad, "O God, give us power for this hour !" 
is the prayer of every heart that has been filled with the 
love of God — only to find that love alone is not sufficient 
to conquer. 

This knowledge increases as the soul that follows Jesus 
presses on in his steps. Into the face of the follower the 
Gadarian demons of his age shake their shackles and 
seek his death ; contagion fills his nostrils with the fetid 
odors of quick-destroying fevers ; and leprosy presses 
near, forgetting to cry "Unclean" in the eagerness of 
its prayer, "Cleanse me as thy Master did." Soon the 
path grows more terrible, and to follow Christ means to 
drink the dregs of the cup of Gethsemane and suffer in 
spiritual agonies until the flesh unable to endure is cleft 
asunder for the outrushingof the tortured blood. Aye, to 
follow Christ means to be haled before the assembly of 
his foes, to be hissed and scorned and mocked and 
scourged and spit upon ; to follow Christ is to stand with 



The Thirst of the Tenant for Power. 343 

the spittle of the world's derision on our face, to be de- 
clared innocent and without fault, yet to be delivered unto 
the rabble to be made the sport of their hate. To take 
up our cross and follow Christ means to take up a cross 
on which we may be crucified and bear it with weary 
steps through the midst of the jeering multitude to the 
Calvary of our life, where we may prove the utmost of our 
love by the surrender of our life. 

But who is sufficient for these things ? Not man ; not 
even the man whose soul is large with the love of God for 
fellow-man. Love alone would shrink from such toil ; 
love alone could not endure the strain. Willing love is 
to make the sacrifice; willing love is to die; but one must 
have strength even to die. Did not those who were with 
Him in the Garden love ? Yet love did not suffice to 
keep their weary eyelids apart. That mother who watches 
over her suffering babe with ceaseless vigilance does so 
not by love alone; love is ready to give itself, but for 
very weariness of the flesh love must fail did not unseen 
conductors convey power to that mother's eyelids and 
hold open those tired eyes. Just such a conveyance to 
himself or equipment of himself with power is the yearn- 
ing desire of the spiritual man, that he may have strength 
to endure the tests that his love prompts him to face. His 
love is ready for Gethsemane and Judgment Hall and Via 
Dolorosa and Calvary, but he has no strength to bear his 
cross, no voice to whisper, "Father, forgive them." 

Is there an answer to this hunger of the spirit ? There 
is. One as large as the need of man and as mighty as 
the omnipotence of God. The revelation of God unto 
man is one of Three Mounts, though much of the proc- 
lamation and explanation of that revelation by the am- 
bassadors of God has been confined to Two Mounts. 
There is no true preaching of the whole Gospel of God 
wherein the thunders of Sinai are not heard. The law 



344 The Eternal Building. 

remains as a part of the message of God. Its lightning 
must be made to flame before men, or the whole counsel 
of God is not declared. But the law appalls if grace — 
love — is not unveiled, and with eager eyes sin-cursed men 
turn from Sinai, where they hear their doom pronounced, 
to Calvary, where love lights the beacon of hope in every 
heart. On the harp of the cross man cannot thrum too 
many melodies for the cheer of men, but the purpose of 
the cross is not merely to reveal love ; it is to arouse 
love. And when the cross is uplifted love will spring 
forth eager to prove itself. Then it is that love finds the 
steeps too high for it to climb alone, the road too lonely 
for it to tread with dauntless step, barriers impeding the 
march that love cannot love out of the way, sacrifice 
which it is ready to make calling for more strength than 
it has to give, and as it yearns for succor the Mount of 
the Upper Room lifts its fiery presence before love's 
longing eyes and asks: "Remember ye not what thy 
Saviour told thee ? Thou shalt be endued with power 
after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. The prom- 
ise is fulfilled; the Holy Ghost is here; Pentecost endures." 
Such is the fact. God answers the thirst of the spirit 
for power by the gift, anointing, enduement, equipment, of 
the Holy Ghost. Once more we behold the grandeur and 
dignity of the spiritual man. He thirsts until God becomes 
eager to give him to drink of the waters of life. Man's 
thirst for power God will answer, but there is no fount at 
which he can drink and be satisfied save at the fount of 
eternal life. God has no other way to quench the thirst 
of man than by the giving to man of himself. Again we 
learn that the hunger and thirst of the spirit are a hunger 
and thirst for God, and in God alone is there satisfaction. 
God is the eternal fountain of spiritual youth; the spirit 
that drinks at that fountain remains young for evermore. 
The thirst of the spirit for power is answered in the won- 



The Thirst of the Tenant for Power. 345 

der of the Third Mount. God the Holy Ghost comes 
down in man to dwell, and the flesh that shrines the spirit 
of man becomes a temple for the continuing presence of 
the Eternal. The union of God and man now becomes 
unquestioned, for God dwells in the man to evidence him- 
self. Now love can consecrate itself to any cross, and the 
power of God within the man will give strength to make 
perfect any sacrifice. The answer of God to the thirst of 
the spirit for power is the endowment of the man with 
power from on high, that he may be equipped to accomplish 
wonders of grace in the world. Man seeks power, and God 
gives himself. God does nothing needlessly. If there 
were any other power that was sufficient to supply the 
spirit's thirst and perform man's work in the spiritual 
world, that power would be given; but there is no power 
that will suffice save that which inheres in God himself, 
and himself he gives to man. Hence it is folly for the 
spiritual man to seek or pray or struggle for power as a 
thing of itself. The power for which the spirit thirsts can- 
not thus be obtained. If you would possess power, you 
must possess God, and this proves that it is not so much a 
question of our getting power as of God getting us. 
When we become God's for his holy possession, then 
through us his power is bound to course, and we will serve 
as the conductors of the divine power to needy humanity. 
If you would have love, you must have God the Christ. If 
you would have power, you must have God the Holy Ghost. 
Do not seek it; seek Mm. Cease praying for power; pray 
for the Holy Ghost. Struggle not for spiritual power, but 
empty yourself for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and 
you will find that with his incoming all power will be given 
you for the prosecution of the work God requires at your 
hand. " Spiritual power is not a separate entity, which 
we may possess independently of the Holy Spirit. The 
power of the spiritual world is in the indwelling and inspira- 



346 The Eternal Building. 

tion of the Holy Spirit himself. We cannot have it apart 
from him. We diminish it when he is grieved or quenched. 
We are most evidently the subjects and vehicles of it 
when he resides in his gracious fullness in yielded and lov- 
ing hearts. We covet the gift; let us then make welcome 
the Giver."* The one way by which the blessing is to be 
obtained is to let the Blesser in. 

Man gets so little in this world without seeking that he 
can scarcely believe there is a better way for him to obtain 
the desire of his soul; yet there is. If you would enjoy 
God in all his wondrous fullness, your part is not to seek 
him, but to surrender to him. Love that cannot be meas- 
ured, seeking will never find, but surrender will bring rush- 
ing in. Power, the might of the Spirit of God, for which 
the world groans in its terrible need, seeking will never 
discover, but surrender, and power like a Niagara will be 
poured out through you. Mesmerists tell us that they can 
perform only through people who have vacant minds. 
They must be empty of their own minds, or the mesmerist 
cannot project his mind into them. If the spirit would be 
indwelt of God, it must be empty of self. The surrender 
of self puts our spirit into the hands of God; we become 
his possession; and he then takes up his abode in us, and, 
lo! we have love abounding and power with God and with 
man. 

The one safe attitude for you to take in the surrender 
of yourself to God is the attitude of prayer. Without 
prayer you cannot surrender; without prayer there is no 
reception of the gift of power. "They continued with 
one accord in prayer and supplication." The only great 
men the world has ever known were men who knew how 
to get down on their knees, and who knew how to talk 
with God when they got there. Prayer is the crown of 
all culture. To know how to pray is almost the greatest 

* Meyer, Key Words of the Inner Life. 



The Thirst of the Tenant for Power. 347 

thing a man can know, for it puts in his hands the key to 
the storehouse of God, where all manner of joy and com- 
fort and peace and gladness is to be found. Young man, 
learn how to pray, or you will never be a great man. 
Young woman, learn how to pray, or you will never be fit 
to be a mother — and earth has no greater earthly honor 
for any woman. The ability to converse well is counted 
the high-water mark of intellectual culture. Prayer is con- 
versation with God, and it reaches its fullest blessedness 
when it becomes communion with God — when the man 
hears the voice of God as well as makes his voice heard 
by God ; communion with God is the high-water mark of 
the culture of the spirit — to talk with God as friend with 
friend is bliss beyond comparison. So, if you want power, 
pray. Enter into thy closet, having made friends with all 
mankind ; then when thou hast shut thy door bow before 
the throne. Pour out yourself until you are empty. Keep 
the census of your hates and passions and lusts and de- 
sires and ambitions and long-petted sins before you on the 
altar until you and God are agreed that they are all slain 
and buried, and you emptied of all the foul store. Then, 
empty, wait. Wait — possibly it may be for days ; yet wait, 
pray. Declare unto God, as did Jacob, that you will 
cling — read your Bible right, the wrestling is God's — cling, 
and not let him go until the blessing is bestowed by the 
Blesser entering the empty spirit. Cling. Wait. Expect. 
Praise. And he has come! Thy knees have touched the 
throne, and the Power has entered into you. Rise and 
shout. Give God the glory. Let your light shine. Go 
forth. Touch the world. Power will accompany you; 
you will perform wonders, for now thy testimony and labor 
shall be with the " demonstration of the Spirit and with 
power." 

Let me press home here, as in earlier divisions, the prac- 
tical application of the truth we have discovered. The 



348 The Eternal Building. 

spiritual man thirsts for power. The Holy Ghost is the 
answer of God to that thirst. Millions have in him their 
thirst assuaged and passed triumphantly through life. No 
man enjoys all God has for him unless he enjoys the gift 
of the Holy Spirit. No man is fully equipped for the work 
God would perform through him who has not received his 
baptism of fire. No man can possibly become a good sol- 
dier of Jesus Christ — and it is the purpose of God that all 
men should become such — who is not able to wield the 
sword of the Spirit through the might of that Spirit's in- 
dwelling presence. Pentecost is not elective ; it is essen- 
tial to full-powered manhood. You are not the man God 
meant and desires you to be unless you have been endued 
with power from on high. You have not attained to the 
crown of your manhood until the crown of fire encircles 
your head, and you are thus anointed a king and a priest 
unto God. There may be much of physical beauty and in- 
tellectual culture and moral grandeur about your life; 
your love may be as tender as the smile of Christ upon the 
babes he blessed, but unless the outpoured power of God 
has granted unto you the tongue of fire, you are dwarfed, 
uncomely, destitute, weak, and enslaved. Your life, as an 
organ, may be perfect in all its appointments, yet send 
forth no praise. If there be no more air in the organ than 
in the room about it, the organ will sound no melody, no 
matter how vigorously even skilled fingers strike the keys. 
Let some child now pump the pedals, and sound will issue, 
but with imperfect vibration and no pleasant harmony. 
But now pump you the bellows full; let steady currents of 
air sweep through all the pipes, and all the room sways 
with the volume of the organ's praise. So it is with your 
spiritual manhood. Your life will give forth no glorious, 
exultant song, no victor's shout will part your lips, no 
mighty conquest mark you one of God's elect, unless the 
rushing mighty wind of the Spirit of the Most High 



The Thirst of the Tenant for Power. 349 

sweeps through your being, and, imbuing you with the 
grandeur of the divine nature, makes manifest your resem- 
blance to God through the matchless harmonies that 
blended love and power send forth on the wings of your 
consecrated living. 

You can win no victories without the Power. The 
battle is won only by fire. The siege is on. Mighty 
walls protect the foe. Through the walls you desire to 
make a breach. How will you do it ? Why, there's a 
cannon. True, but what can that do ? What is there to 
fear in it ? Look; why, there is a pair of doves cooing in 
its very mouth! Well, look at those cannon balls. I see 
them, but were each regiment in the army to take one and 
hurl it against those walls, not a stone would tumble. See, 
those children are playing hide and seek amid the iron 
pyramids. But there's the powder. The magazine is full 
of it. Aye, but your full magazine is more dangerous to 
yourselves than to your enemy. All your powder will 
never make a breach in the walls. What then ? if the 
cannon and the cannon balls and the powder are all 
powerless, how shall the city be taken ? Look ! Within 
a cannon a cannon ball has been charged home amid a 
bed of powder; now on the powder a spark of fire falls; 
there is a hissing, a puff of smoke, a flare of flame, a roar- 
ing sound, and across the miles of space the cannon ball 
speeds; it strikes the wall with terrific force; there is a 
crash of rending, falling rock, and, lo! the breach is made. 
And the power to make powerful these mighty agents of 
destruction was in the spark of fire. Only the baptism of 
fire will enable you to triumph. For the baptism of fire 
the world hungers to-day. 

Remember God is as eager to bestow his Power upon 
you as your need of that Power is urgent. The need of the 
world is heavy on his heart, and through you he would 
give himself for its supply. Empowered through the in- 



350 The Eternal Building. 

dwelling of the Spirit in your inner man, you will be 
enabled to join the company of mighty ones who have 
wrought mightily for God in the ages past. Think what 
this Power has made of men. He made of that poor 
coward who cursed his Master at the jibe of a slave girl 
the fearless preacher of the pentecostal sermon. He 
made of the eleven who dared not stand beside the cross 
flaming evangels of that cross, ready to die, as all save 
one did die, a martyr's death for the truth that the cross 
proclaimed. That Power took a poor miner's son, who 
had to sing on the streets to earn his bread, and made of 
him the Thunderer of the Reformation and the liberator 
of the consciences of millions. He took a farmer's child 
and fashioned him into the master builder of English 
freedom. He took a tavern boy and made him the 
mightiest evangelist of the ages. He took the sons of a 
humble preacher and sent them singing and preaching the 
Gospel of free salvation all around the world, and by them 
founded one of the most victorious branches of the Church 
on earth. He took a tinker into a prison, and there used 
him to set the story of a pilgrim's progress in such array 
as to inspire the weary upward march of millions. He 
took a cobbler from his bench and made him the fore- 
runner of a mighty host, who for love of God and love of 
man would go to the uttermost parts of the earth to pro- 
claim the story of redeeming love and pentecostal power. 
He takes an aristocratic farmer from his stately home 
and makes him endure the endless fatigues and hardships 
of dreary days of war, but by him marks out a new path 
for freedom and builds a new ark for the rights of man. 
He takes a rough rail-splitter from his ax and makes him 
swing the pen that emancipates a race and inaugurates a 
new day for the great new nation of the West. He takes 
a man to die in Africa's lonely heart, but makes him the 
beacon that spurs others to give life and fortune for the 



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JOHN WESLEY. 



" Christ always has a to-morrow. Paul was the hereafter 
of Christ, Athanasius the hereafter of Paul, Wyclif the here- 
after of Athanasius, Luther the hereafter of Wyclif, Wesley 
the hereafter of Luther." — John P. Newman. 



The Thirst of the Tenant for Power. 351 

illumination of the land of gloom. He takes men out of 
every nation and tribe and kindred and puts them to the 
performance of the will of God, and on heaven's roll their 
names are recorded as those of the real monarchs of life, 
for they were monarchs of the spiritual realm. That roll 
is not yet complete. There is room on it for the names of 
those who are yet to surprise the race with their glorious 
work for God, for those who are to triumph in their 
battles for the uplift of the race. There is room for your 
name, and enrolled it will be if you surrender yourself to 
God for the manifestation of his love and power. 

The golden age of the world is not past — it is yet to 
come. The age that is to be radiant with the outpoured 
splendor of God is still before us. There are signs that it 
is near at hand. You can hasten it. Let God shine 
through you. Let the power of the Most High make you 
mighty to the pulling down of the strongholds of wicked- 
ness. Let the love of God, dwelling in you, richly prompt 
you to present yourself a living sacrifice to the world, 
which it is your high privilege to do, that some in the 
world may through you be saved. Give yourself to the 
work of God. The victory is sure, and the eternal ages 
will be long enough to reward you for any shortness of 
time. Be a man. A complete man. God-fashioned, God- 
filled, Godlike. Through such men God always speaks 
and works. 

Hold fast to thy equipment of power. Let no man take 
away thy crown. In the ears of all the world declare the 
power and the glory and blessedness of the pentecosted 
life, and as you repeat the Creed each day let the wonder 
of a clause that has meant little, perchance, in the past in- 
spire your faith. Listen to this shout of faith by one of 
the most saintly and heroic men of our century: 

"In this age of faith in the natural and disinclination 

to the supernatural we want especially to meet the whole 
23 



352 The Eternal Building. 

world with this credo : 'I believe in the Holy Ghost.' I 
expect to see saints as lovely as any that are written of in 
the Scriptures — because I believe in the Holy Ghost. I 
expect to see preachers as powerful to set forth Christ evi- 
dently crucified before the eyes of men, as powerful to 
pierce the conscience, to persuade, to convince, to con- 
vert, as any that ever shook the multitudes of Jerusalem 
or Corinth or Rome — because I believe in the Holy Ghost. 
I expect to see Churches the members of which shall be 
severally endued with spiritual gifts and every one moving 
in spiritual activity, animating and edifying one another, 
commending themselves to the conscience of the world by 
their good works, commending their Saviour to it by a 
heart-engaging testimony — because I believe in the Holy 
Ghost. I expect to see villages where all the respectable 
people are now opposed to religion, the proprietor un- 
godly, the nominal pastor worldly, all that take a lead set 
against Christianity — to see such villages summoned, dis- 
turbed, divided, and then reunited, by the subduing of the 
whole population to Christ — because I believe in the Holy 
Ghost. I expect to see cities swept from end to end, their 
manners elevated, their commerce purified, their politics 
Christianized, their criminal population reformed, their 
poor made to feel that they dwell among brethren; right- 
eousness in the streets, peace in the homes, an altar at 
every fireside — because I believe in the Holy Ghost. I 
expect to see the world to be overflowed with the knowl- 
edge of God ; the day to come when no man shall need to 
say to his neighbor, 'Know thou the Lord,' but when all 
shall know him, 'from the least unto the greatest' — east 
and west, north and south, uniting to praise the name of 
the one God and the one Mediator — because I believe in 
the Holy Ghost."* 

" The day of God will come, and the heart of the earth 

♦Arthur, The Tongue of Fire. 



The Thirst of the Tenant for Power. 353 

will ache no more, and the riven side of the race will cease 
to flow, and the Spirit of Jesus will be the omnipotent bond 
of human brotherhood, and children will be born into 
an atmosphere of prayer, and sin and death will be a 
dream of a night, and the pain of the groaning creation 
be changed to an anthem of praise ; when the disciples of 
Christ come to so believe in the reality of his redemption 
that they dedicate all they are and have to the righteous- 
ness of his kingdom. The creation groans and travails in 
pain, waiting only for the children of men to stand forth 
and show themselves the sons of God. The day of God 
will come, and there will be night no more. Humanity 
moves upward ; and the heavens lower bend, age by age, 
folding the earth closer in the heart of the Father. And 
heaven and earth, under the hand of the risen Christ, who 
holds the key to human history, will be attuned in one 
eternal harmony of love."* 

The world waits for the baptism of fire, and the baptism 
waits for the consecrated lives through which to flame; the 
day when the consecrated host shall kneel for their crown 
of fire is not far distant. The saints shall rule the world. 
Baptized with fire, they will go forth to take the world and 
shape it into a fit habitation for the greatest buildings in 
the world — men. 

Behold an Easter at the holy sepulcher. It is night, and 
though a thousand priests are gathered in the church, and 
a vast multitude throng without, not a light is to be seen. 
Darkness reigns supreme, save for the glimmer of a few 
stars above the heads of those who press one another with- 
out the sacred walls. Then a cry is heard. The patriarch 
comes. Through the crowd and darkness he makes his 
way; he enters the church, and through its gloom also 
presses to enter the cave-like recess where the body of 
Jesus is said to have lain. Then all is still. Slowly the 

* Herron, A Plea for the Gospel. 



354 The Eternal Building. 

moments of darkness pass. Five, ten, twenty, forty, sixty 
minutes the strange darkness and stillness are endured. In 
all that time not a light is seen nor sound heard save the 
muttered prayers of some devotee or the groanings of 
some awe-stirred worshiper. Suddenly the veil that hides 
the holy place from the gaze of men is separated, and the 
sheen of a light within the place where Jesus lay is seen. 
Then the patriarch springs out with a lighted torch in his 
hand. A hundred hands reach for it to light the torch 
they hold. In a moment a score of torches are lighted; in 
another the number has increased to hundreds, and the 
church is all aflame with light. Forth from the church the 
torches are passed, and in another moment the hilltop is 
glorious with the gleam of ten thousand torches, and you 
can see the line of light speeding away toward the city, 
and then on and on along the highway where pilgrims are 
encamped for the Easter night. It seems but a moment 
since the darkness reigned, and now the light is every- 
where, and all the light is but the outreach of that one 
feeble torch that was lit within the tomb of Jesus. Brother, 
sister, forth from the throne, not the tomb, of the risen 
Christ has the lit torch come. That torch is the tongue 
of fire, the baptism of power, the Holy Spirit. O, if it has 
not been already accomplished, just now reach forth by 
the surrender of yourself, and have the torch of your life 
lighted by this heavenly flame. Become a burning and a 
shining light. Receive ye now the Holy Ghost. Let the 
power in, then through you let it work forth. Light your 
torch, light your torch, and you will find you have not 
only won the light, but the power. 

Faith the Conqueror. 
"I will loose my camel, and commit it to Allah," said a 
follower of Mohammed at the close of a long, weary march 
over the desert. "Nay," answered the prophet, "tie thy 



Faith the Conqueror. 355 

camel; then commit it to Allah." Faith is not faith until 
it ties the life to God. Loose belief is unbelief, but true 
faith, though its tie-rope be no stronger than a kite-string, 
is conquering begun. 

Hast thou faith ? It is a wondrous thing; it is thy life 
in the hand of God, he using it as the scepter to astonish 
the world with marvels. Behold how a great scientist 
longed for it. " I envy no quality of the mind or intellect 
in others, be it genius, power, wit, or fancy, but I should 
prefer a firm, religious faith to every other blessing, for it 
makes life a discipline of goodness, creates new hopes 
when all earthly hopes vanish, and throws over the decay 
and apparent destruction of existence the most gorgeous 
of all lights, awakens life even in death, and from corrup- 
tion and decay calls up beauty and divinity, and makes an 
instrument of torture and shame the ladder of ascent to 
paradise." * 

Faith — what is it ? You have heard so much about 
faith within the Church and so little about it without the 
temple doors that perhaps you have come to consider it 
something to be found or exercised only in religious 
affairs ; something wondrously ushered into the world by 
Jesus Christ and impossible of exercise save in religious 
ways. Not so. Faith dates from the moment Adam 
looked into the face of God and realized that he was the 
one to trust. It is not a strange, unaccountable thing 
supernaturally infused into the race by Christianity, but 
an old friend by which all the men who have ever lived 
have lightened their burdens and brightened their way. 
Faith is as commonplace a thing as breathing, sleeping, 
walking ; aye, it is by the exercise of faith that we dare 
breathe or sleep or walk. Certainly there is some differ- 
ence to be traced between what is termed natural faith 
and religious faith, but the metaphysicians and theolo- 

* Sir Humphrey Davy. 



356 The Eternal Building. 

gians who have been most careful to jot down the chalk 
line of demarcation between these have only been too 
sadly successful in making faith a mystery. Faith is not 
a mystery; it is but common sense relying on God to keep 
his word and furnish the plan and the power for the de- 
velopment of the raw material he thrusts into our hands. 
Faith is the rock foundation for all the business of the 
world; on faith all governments are reared; by faith all 
knowledge and culture are gained; progress flies on the 
wings of faith; and all the wheels of the world's activity 
and accomplishment run on the rails of faith. This is 
true, but it is no more true than what you have perhaps 
already learned by heart — that faith is the anchor of the 
soul by which it is held to the Rock Christ Jesus, and his 
likeness is wrought upon it. Faith is fundamental to 
business success. You cannot make money without exer- 
cising faith. Let us see. Take a run through the country 
in September or October, and you will find the farmers 
plowing their fields and actually scattering seed broad- 
cast over the harrowed earth. What ! are they fools ? 
Do they not know that the terrible frosts and earth-cover- 
ing snows of winter are at hand ? Aye, they know, but 
they also know that the God of nature knows how to fer- 
tilize a crop much better than man. The snow will work 
greater wonders than carloads of phosphates, and when in 
the fall the farmer commits his grain to the soil it is with 
faith in the sure operation of the laws of nature to bring 
the light frosts in time to check too rank fall growth, and 
that the snow will follow the frost to protect the embryo 
crop. There is the storekeeper. He has a few dollars 
which he invests in the stock he puts on his shelves. But 
there is not a customer for his wares; yet he believes they 
will come. Faith waits. He believes that his goods 
when known will find purchasers. They come; his stock 
goes, and fresh supplies must be got in to continue the 



Faith the Conqueror. 357 

business; so you see that not only to begin but to con- 
tinue his business he must exercise faith. Every increase 
of goods in his stock must be preceded by an increase in 
his faith that the added stock will find sale. This is true 
spiritually also; to increase our spiritual business, and thus 
our spiritual wealth, we must increase our faith. Study 
the ways of the manufacturer. What a life of faith he 
illustrates! Thousands or millions of dollars have to be 
invested in buildings and machinery; great quantities of 
raw material must be purchased and worked up. On 
what ? Why, on faith that the goods made of that mate- 
rial by the machinery in those buildings will find a market. 
More; even when he secures an order he must ship his 
goods to a comparative stranger and have faith that the 
few bits of signed paper which are then sent to him will 
bring him cash some months later. That is faith long 
drawn out. Faith in God must often thus stretch itself 
to mighty projects and wait weary months before fulfill- 
ment, the cashier of faith, cashes the checks we hold. Be- 
hold the seaman ! Land is many a day's sail away. There 
are no paths, no milestones, save here and there a buoy 
warning of rock or shoal. Night comes; her queen's face 
is veiled by inky clouds; thunder crashes and rolls with 
terrifying reverberations; lightnings dart to and fro on 
destructive errands; and the rain descends in cataracts. 
Like some huge angry beast, the sea roars and hisses and 
lashes itself, and rearing its frightful waves as high as 
the masts of the ship that is at its mercy, pours them 
upon it in an avalanche of water that well-nigh swamps 
the city on the sea. But look to the bridge! There, 
with his hand on the wires that carry his signals to the 
wheelman in the pilot house, stands the captain. His 
eyes are on the compass, his finger on the chart. Pour 
rain, roar wind, rage sea, he minds it not. His ship is 
stanch. She'll weather the gale. But he will keep his 



358 The Eternal Building. 

eye on the needle and his finger on the chart, and keep as 
well to his course as the strength of the storm will permit. 
No storm breaks his faith in that chart and compass; amid 
it all he puts implicit trust in each and stakes his all upon 
their direction. That is faith in a storm. There are such 
things in the spiritual realm. Grace is not always a 
stormless sea. Storms do arise even when the saints are 
sailing on, but no matter how fierce the winds or wild the 
waves or dark the way, there is the Chart. "He was 
touched with the feeling of our infirmities," and marked 
by him are all the rocks and treacherous channels. There 
is the Compass, the Eternal Spirit, who ever points heaven- 
ward and will safely pilot the committed life over every 
tempestuous sea. 

Governments could not exist nor governmental projects 
succeed were it not for faith. William of Orange had 
faith in the few nobles of England who asked him to save 
Great Britain from the tyranny of the Catholic James. 
The prince had faith in his Dutch troopers; he had faith 
in the power of right over wrong; he had faith in God. 
Thus powered, he sailed for England, landed miraculously, 
conquered almost without bloodshed, and the English 
Revolution, with all its benefits to civil liberty and religious 
freedom, wrote itself on the page of history. Our fore- 
fathers in the Continental Congress had faith in them- 
selves, in their sturdy arms and hearts; they had faith in 
their compatriots in all the colonies; they had faith in the 
good hand of God, and, matching valor with valor on every 
field of the war, they triumphed. By faith Livingstone 
toiled through the jungles, and in our own day Stanley 
crossed and recrossed the Dark Continent. By faith 
Nansen committed himself to the currents of the north, 
and on their icy bosom was safe. Grant, with faith in his 
own generalship and in the power of repeated blows on 
one body, crushed the Confederacy and crowned with vie- 



Faith the Conqueror. 359 

tory the Union armies. Without faith governments could 
not endure. On the one hand, those in authority believe 
the people will submit to the enforcement of the laws; on 
the other, the people, while occasionally they may justly 
express concern as to the wisdom of this or that measure, 
believe that those in authority will do the best possible. 

"Faith is the basis of all great, active enterprises. . . . 
Without faith there would have been no Parthenon and no 
Pyramids. Without faith there would have been no Ther- 
mopylae and no memorable Marathon. Hannibal could 
not have passed the Alps without faith. Cincinnatus 
could neither have plowed nor have left the plow; 
could neither have sowed for the harvest nor trained sol- 
diers for victory, without faith. Columbus could not have 
crossed the sea without faith. And here we speak not of 
religious but of natural faith. Cortes could not have con- 
quered Mexico without faith. Park, Ledyard, Cooke, and 
Bruce could not have explored unknown countries without 
faith. The English Revolution, the French Revolution, 
the American Revolution, whatever faults or crimes may 
have accompanied any or all of them, could not have been 
accomplished without faith. The same may be said of all 
great civil and political movements. A mere sneerer, the 
man who sits in his easy chair, believing in nothing and 
laughing at everything, could have done none of these 
things. No oceans are crossed by him; no nations are 
conquered; no boundless forests are subdued ; no rude 
barbarism is tamed; no new civilization is planted and 
reared, at the expense of toil and blood unto mighty 
triumph, but by faith." * 

We should be fools indeed, our minds would be dwarfed 
and shriveled, our knowledge of the past would not exist, 
were it not that we exercise faith. Faith is the founda- 
tion of education. The young man of to-day has put in 

* Upham. 



360 The Eternal Building. 

his hand a history of the war. He reads it and believes 
it, and so learns the history of a time before he was born. 
You open your daily paper read the happenings of your 
town or the distant capitals and battlefields of the 
earth. By faith you receive what you have read as truth, 
and go forth to talk about those things as realities, and the 
business man by them learns when to trim his sails or 
spread all the canvas to the breeze. In school, college, 
and seminary a pile of books is set before you. Things 
that men ransacked their brains and the universe two and 
three thousand years ago to discover you are told to learn 
and believe, and if you do not do so, you come forth a 
blockhead. Now, all this belief is faith, and there is not 
so much difference between believing the truth taught in 
mathematics and grammar and believing the truth taught 
in the revelation God has made of himself that you need 
to befog your mind with a vast veil of mystery. Catch the 
secret of all this belief that we have found. It is the com- 
mittal of self to the thing believed. It is obediently fol- 
lowing the direction of the truth learned. Faith is not a 
thing of mere opinion. All the opinions in the world 
never won a victory. As Dr. Martineau truly says, " Noth- 
ing so marks the degradation of modern Christianity as 
the notion that faith is only opinion." Your opinions 
about God, about Christ, about the Bible, about salvation, 
are not faith. The devil has a pretty accurate opinion of 
God; his imps believe and tremble. Opinion is merely 
cold intellectual assent; faith is abandonment of self to the 
work, practice, direction, inspiration, prompted by the 
thing believed. Religious faith is the response of the soul 
to God and the abandonment of the life to the divine 
control and use. 

" Faith is, therefore, that act and that habit of the human 
soul by which the truth concerning God is drawn in from 
the far distance and enthroned over the whole heart, and, 



Faith the Conqueror. 361 

therefore, over the life. It is an act of the whole man 
Godward — of the intellect, which sees ; also of the con- 
science, which responds; of the heart, which bows in adora- 
tion; of the will, which chooses. It is that act and habit 
of the human soul which by God become a living reality, 
holding all things, determining all thoughts, all senti- 
ments, all emotions, all affections, all aspirations. In a 
word, it is taking God into account — the being, thinking, 
feeling, living, as if there was God."* "Faith is that 
response of the will of man which unites it to the will of 
God. Faith is that step, whether one or many, which 
conjoins the life of man with the life of God. Faith is 
that action which surrenders all one's interests to the 
getting of God's will done upon the earth as it is done in 
heaven. Faith is unreserved cooperation, partnership, 
friendship with God, so that God possesses the life, work- 
ing with it and through it ; so that the man of faith is not 
his own man, but God's man. The man of faith is not 
blinded by the self-satisfaction of society; not deceived by 
material progress; neither bewildered by the babble of 
admiring voices nor borne down beneath defeat. It is the 
very essence of faith to listen only to the voice of God, 
and learn what God wants done and is doing in the 
believer's day and generation, inquiring not for im- 
mediate results, conscious that only righteousness is 
progressive and profitable in the everlasting summing up 
of things, "f 
Aye, true is the word of the English poet: 

Think not the faith by which the just shall live 
Is a dead creed, a map correct of heaven, 

Much less a feeling faint and fugitive, 
A thoughtless gift withdrawn as soon as given; 

It is the affirmation and the act 

Which bid eternal truth be present fact. 

*Bishop E. G. Andrews, Interdenominational Sermons. 
tHerron, A Plea for the Gospel. 



362 The Eternal Building. 

Read Heb. xi, i, thus, if you would catch the measure 
of the apostle's affirmation: " Faith is the realization of 
things hoped for, the proof of things unseen." 

Faith increases manhood. It enables man to measure 
up well to the thought of the Eternal for him. Faith 
binds the finite and the infinite with enduring bands, and 
man thus belted to Divinity performs the miraculous in the 
realm of grace with all its attendant betterment in the 
realm of flesh. As Alexander Maclaren says: " Given a man 
full of faith, you will have a man tenacious in purpose, 
absorbed in one grand object, simple in his motives, in 
whom selfishness has been driven out by the power of a 
mightier love, and indolence stirred into unwearied 
energy." Faith is frightened by no task, for it measures 
all the work that is to be done by the inexhaustible power 
of God, and dares attack the mountain commanding it to 
give way. Faith is a wrestler. It wins by the clinch. 
Throw it God cannot, though he suffers Job to lose his all, 
though he bids Abraham offer Isaac, though he calls the 
Syrophenician a dog, though he casts his nationality in 
the teeth of the Roman centurion ; faith continues to hug, 
and the divine Wrestler must blessedly drop his hand 
below the belt and dislocate a thigh before he can escape 
the arms of the prevailing one. This is the elasticity of 
faith; it maintains its hold no matter what the shock, stress, 
or strain. Come woe or grief, or pain or death, it will not 
be shaken off; it lets not go until the blessing crowns it 
with victory, until the man prevails with God. Faith 
makes the man. You will be as great as your faith. Your 
life will transmit to your fellows as much of God as your 
faith dares to take of God. Listen, learn ! 

To live for common ends is to be common. 
The highest faith makes still the highest man ; 
For we grow like the things our souls believe, 
And rise or sink as we aim high or low. 
No mirror shows such likeness of the face 



Faith the Conqueror. 363 

As faith we live by of the heart and mind. 

We are in very truth that which we love ; 

And love, like noblest deeds, is born of faith. 

The lover and the hero reason not, 

But they believe in what they love and do. 

All else is accident — this is the soul 

Of life, and lifts the whole man to itself, 

Like a keynote, which, running through all sounds, 

Upbears them all in harmony.* 

Aye, this word is true — the highest faith makes still the 
highest men. Look at them! "Abraham believed God; 
and his faith is bearing fruit in earth-wide and eternal 
harvests of righteousness, filling the earth with the knowl- 
edge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. Moses be- 
lieved God ; and his belief is yet fashioning human institu- 
tions after the mind of God. Elijah believed God ; and 
in the secret of Elijah's praying places God formed new 
epochs of history. David believed God; and the Spirit 
breathed into his sinful soul celestial songs of deathless 
hopes. Daniel believed God; and by the hand of captive 
Jew God started the earth upon a new career. Paul be- 
lieved God; and watch him as he goes from nation to 
nation, striding the earth like the moral colossus that he 
is. Before his advance the work of armies is undone, walls 
of partition crumble between man and man, gates of brass 
swing open, thrones topple, and a new Europe leaps from 
the ruins Rome has wrought of a race's liberties. John be- 
lieved God; and down into his self-emptied soul was 
poured the fullness of God's mind, so that he writes the 
words of God to centuries far distant, and writes as 
never the pen of man has written. Calvin, the timid 
scholar, believed God; and God made him the bulwark of 
freedom, against which the wrath of unrighteousness and 
the judgments of hypocrisy could not prevail. Cromwell 
believed God; and look at him — a pious and wrathful 
English farmer, muttering against tyranny and popery, 

* Bishop J. L. Spalding, Education and the Higher Life. 



364 The Eternal Building. 

brooding over his Bible while sin revels in the Church and 
rules the State. While he prays and grumbles, somehow 
God's omnipotence gets down inside of that farmer, and 
when he girds on his sword for his dreadful work the earth 
quakes beneath his tread, and hell is helpless to stop him ; 
he makes the Anglo-Saxon with his Bible the master of 
the world."* Luther believed God; and error, long in- 
trenched, fell beneath his hammer's blows. The chains 
that bound the word of God were swept away; the shackles 
that enslaved the minds of men were riven ; and with faith 
filling his soul, peace enrapturing his mind, and the un- 
bound word in his hand, man stood erect to take the world 
for God. Wesley believed God; and the outpoured love of 
God that filled his soul sent him into the fields to cry, " The 
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me 
to preach the Gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal 
the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and 
recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are 
bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. " f 
And thus beginning, he ceased not in his testimony until all 
England and her colonies heard him. Salvation ran with joy- 
ful sound full round the earth, and holiness recovered fore- 
tokened the time when on earth His saved ones would live 
as kings and priests unto God. Edwards believed God ; and 
the young Church of the colonies, awakened by his sacrifi- 
cing efforts, put on her beautiful garments and, thus adorned, 
went forth to hold the new world for God and make it 
his beacon to every other land in need of light. Lincoln 
believed God ; and, on his knees, with the death cries of 
Gettysburg's sixty thousand slain ringing in his ears, he 
promised God to do a wondrous thing if he would give 
the sign. At Antietam Jehovah-jireh spake, and Lincoln 
set his face to the work that made the black millions free. 

* Herron, A Plea for the Gospel. 

+ The text of Wesley's first sermon in the open air, Bristol, Monday, May 2, 1739. 




GEORGE MULLER. 



A millionaire by faith. 



" Howe'er it be, it seems to me 
'Tis only noble to be good. 
Kind hearts are more than coronets, 
And simple faith than Norman blood.' 



Tennyson. 



Faith the Conqueror. 365 

Behold the crowning of the conquering faith of some 
who have lived in our day. "If the single man," said 
Emerson, " plant himself indomitably upon his divine in- 
stincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round 
to him." Behold this wrought out in life! Look on that 
patriarch who walks the street of Bristol, England. The 
white of more than ninety glorious years encrowns his head, 
but his radiant face proclaims the enduring youthfulness 
of his soul. Long, long years ago a lad was hungry on 
the street, and George Mtiller took him to his parsonage 
table for his dinner. But the lad was not the only hungry 
one in England; the parsonage soon filled with them; so did 
a second and third hired house, and then the young pastor 
said he must build a home for them. But where was the 
money ? He had none, and his friends had none to give 
him. Money for himself Mtiller has never allowed him- 
self, but God has had much for him to invest for him. 
God's money came in for that first building; then it came 
in to support it; to build another and support it; for 
another, and another, until to-day seven great buildings, 
housing fifteen hundred children, stand beside that Bristol 
road, and scattered throughout the world to the number 
of one hundred and twenty thousand are the noble men 
and women who owe their lives and honor to Mailer's 
orphan home. This great work has taken over seven mil- 
lions of God's dollars, but in all the years his steward has 
never solicited of man a single penny. He has talked the 
need of the day over with God, and God that need has 
never failed to supply. Aye, as a love token, God has 
given this man a million and a half other dollars to use in 
missionary enterprises in various heathen lands. 

Go to Hamburg, Germany, and look upon the uninvit- 
ing place where Immanuel Wichern opened his first "Rough 
House" for the abandoned classes of that great city. 
Humble indeed was the beginning of this work, very like 



366 The Eternal Building. 

in plan to that of McAll in Paris, and McAuley in New- 
York — loving wanderers back to purity. Beyond measure 
it has succeeded ; the seed Wichern planted has yielded the 
hundredfold increase and become an immense imperial 
benevolence, extending not only over all the cities of the 
Fatherland, but branching out into almost every city of 
Europe. The work of this man of faith has wrought mar- 
velous things. 

A few years ago a young New York city pastor resigned 
from a church where his salary was four thousand dollars 
a year, believing that by standing with the poorer people 
in their poverty he could more successfully win them to 
his Christ. Hiring a store for a mission hall, he stood on 
the street before it night after night to tell the story of the 
cross and invite the passers-by into the humble prayer 
room. The common people, as in the other day when the 
Carpenter of Nazareth preached, heard him gladly, and 
the work increased. From the first the pastor insisted on 
great investments in missions by his converts. The exam- 
ple of his flock spread the contagion of the mission fever 
throughout the small denomination, and in the per capita 
sum of their offerings they bid fair to become the Moravi- 
ans of the New World. At Old Orchard, Me., in the sum- 
mer of 1895, a summer gathering led by this leader poured 
forth their gifts with a holy enthusiasm until nearly a hun- 
dred thousand dollars was on the altars of the Lord. With 
like enthusiasm a smaller company assembled at Yonkers, 
N. Y., in 1897, were led by him to consecrate forty thou- 
sand dollars to this same redeeming work. Faith still 
conquers, faith still exhilarates, faith still makes glad the 
heart of God and cheers the hearts of men, and Simpson 
and his Christian Alliance may well arise to stir and spur 
all the churches to that consecrated giving that will lift the 
missionary debts of Christendom and close the missionary 
century with the enthusiasm of victory. 



Faith the Conqueror. 367 

Look you to that good man who still lives the God- 
recognized king of the New Hebrides. On August 30, 
1858, John G. Paton landed at Aneityum, where Geddie 
and Inglis had preceded him, and where they so gloriously 
continued their work. Soon he passed over to Tanna, 
where but a few days after his arrival the victors in a little 
tribal fight cooked and feasted on the slain, spoiling the 
water of the stream by washing the mutilated bodies in it. 
A few months later his bride, racked by the terrible fever 
of the South Seas, passed on and left the hero to his lonely 
fight. Yet, dauntless of heart, he toiled on, his sturdy 
stand against wife-beating and widow-strangling adding 
fuel to the rage of the flesh-hungry cannibals, and making 
them more determined to take his life. There was scarce 
a day that muskets pointed at his head were not strangely 
held from discharging their deadly shot into his form. 
Again and again he was saved by a hairbreadth from the 
descending blows of axes and clubs. At last the mission 
house was destroyed, his few belongings stolen, and only 
a series of miracles, as a few faithful ones gave their lives 
for his, saved him from death as he was chased from the 
land. But the seed was sown; the blood of converts 
watered it; Tanna welcomed him back; all the islands 
opened their hearts to him at last; and he lives to labor 
among Christians as glorious as any that ever bore the 
blessed name; to behold Christian temples standing where 
the fires of cannibalism blazed two score years ago; and to 
break the bread of life to saints that control for God the 
islands that for centuries served as the drill ground for 
Satanic plans to blast and doom the race. 

The records of men are crowded with such examples, 

and the records of God have many more that we may read 

in the ages to come; but do you note the secret of this 

conquering faith? It is the perfect abandon with which 

these men throw themselves on God. They take him at 
24 



368 The Eternal Building. 

his word, confidently believing that he will do all he prom- 
ises. Friends may pity them for their softening of the 
brain; foes may hiss " Fanatic;" defeat may stare them in 
the eyes; starvation run its piercing knives through all 
their flesh; death rise up and rattle the grave clods in their 
ears, but still they trust God. Paul in the storm is the 
type of all this royal host. He has had his vision, as faith 
to be buoyant must always have. The word of God has 
passed to him, "God hath given thee all them that sail 
with thee;" and now, though the storm rages, though the 
ship grates upon the rocks, though the mad waves throw 
their sucking arms about the trembling seamen, Paul 
stands forth sublime in his confident faith. "Be of good 
cheer. For there shall be no loss of any man's life among 
you, for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me." 
Ah! that is faith; that is the power that conquers; that is 
the victory that overcomes the world. Such a man knows 
that the work is not his own, that the victory is not his 
own, that the glory is not his own ; it is God triumphing 
through him. He is eyes, ears, tongue, hands, feet, life, 
to God, for the blessing and redemption of men. God 
takes him in all his weakness, and because of the complete- 
ness of his self-surrender empowers him with the divine 
might, and glorifies him with divine intelligence, and 
dares to stake the issue of eternal moral interests upon the 
man's fidelity. The man conquers, and other men rejoice 
that such conquering is possible to manhood; but he con- 
quers because his life has been wielded by God. From 
ancient history there comes a story of a valiant captain 
whose banner was always in the front of the fight, whose 
sword was the dread of his adversaries, for it always cut its 
way to victory. Hearing much of his triumphs, his king one 
day asked to examine his sword. The blade was handed 
to the king, and when he had quietly looked it over he 
returned it to the captain, saying; "I see nothing wonder- 



Faith the Conqueror. 369 

ful in the sword. I cannot see why it should be so much 
feared." "Your majesty," replied the captain, "you 
have examined the sword, but not the arm that wields it. 
If you had done so, and could see the heart that guides the 
arm, the mystery might be plain." 

Stand in awe of the man of faith, but know the secret of 
his strength. He is the Lord's sword. He is the Lord's 
steward. He is the Lord's mouthpiece. God uses him 
because the man by faith puts himself entirely within the 
Master's hand. For such men the world waits; for such 
men the race groans; for such men God yearns, that 
through them he may hasten the time when the wicked- 
ness of the wicked may be brought to an end and universal 
righteousness fill the world with its jubilant song. " Never 
was there a time in the history of the world when moral 
heroes were more needed. The world waits for such. The 
providence of God has commanded science to labor and 
prepare the way for such. For them she is laying her iron 
tracks, and stretching her wires, and bridging the oceans. 
But where are they? Who shall breathe into our civil and 
political relations the breath of a higher life?"* Will you? 
Will you? The appeal of the world, of the race, of God, 
is personal — it is to you. What answer give you ? There 
has never been a day since Adam sinned, which offered 
such peerless opportunities to heroic manhood and con- 
quering faith as crowd on you to-day. The pulse of the 
race throbs fast with the expectancy of mighty movements 
for social betterment, the atmosphere of the nations is 
electric with stupendous national upheavals and re- 
shapings, f the heart of the Church of God is quivering with 
prophetic anticipations of the mightiest baptism of love 
and power it has ever known. The whole wide world 

* Mark Hopkins. 

t This was written three months before the destruction of the Maine ; the proof 
sheets pass me on the day the Peace of Paris is announced, remaking the map of the 
great republic. 



370 The Eternal Building. 

seems at the feet of God, and on it there is certainly to be 
poured forth surprising blessings. The past has not begun 
to perform the wonders that shall be performed to-morrow. 
"The golden age is not past; it is yet to come. It may 
be here to-morrow. Raphael may paint his Madonnas, 
and bring the world to its knees, but coming sons of God 
will paint blessed Mary's more blessed Son with such com- 
manding pencil that the world will arise to do his bidding. 
Michael Angelo may make men quake with horror as they 
survey his 'Last Judgment,' but there will arise a more 
Christ-understanding master who will so picture the sorrow 
of the heavenly Judge in bidding any child of earth depart 
from him forever that all but very fiends must yield, and 
by love so compassionate be drawn to serve him. Rubens 
may joy in setting on the canvas the adoration of the wise- 
men kings, but a greater shall inspire us more blessedly as 
he paints the adoration of the princes of the coming cen- 
turies to the King of kings. Leonardi thrills us with his 
masterly 'Last Supper,' but there will arise one who will 
by faith enter where John entered, and, thither returning, 
paint for us the feast in which our own soul will partici- 
pate, even the ' Marriage Supper of the Lamb. ' 

" Shakespeare wrought for God and man, but there shall 
a son of God arise who will soar to loftier heights, and, 
passing from the portrayal of conscience branded by the 
hot irons of murderous memory, voice the victorious ex- 
ultation of a conscience at peace with God. Dante dipped 
his pen in gall, and from a mind necessarily vitiated by the 
awful vileness of his environment drew such pictures of 
eternal woe that the world has stood aghast for century fol- 
lowing century ; but there will rise a son of God who will 
dip his pen in the blood that flowed and write such a poem 
of sacrificing justice that hearts like adamant must melt 
and choose the better part. Milton, blind to earth, could 
see from hell — through paradise — to heaven, and write as 



Faith the Conqueror. 371 

though he had trod the streets of this trinity of wonders ; 
yet a greater than Milton shall rise, and with a mind 
cleared for truer vision, rhythm tuned for richer harmony, 
pen trained to express loftier thought, so describe the 
glory awaiting the sons of God that Christ by his speedy 
coming will crown him as heaven's laureate. 

" Music will catch the melody of the ten thousand times 
ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and will bless the 
earth with such songs as angels sing. Has Haydn filled 
thy soul with awe as the glorious harmonies of ' The Cre- 
ation ' have shaped chaos into order before thy enraptured 
mind ? Expand thy soul, for it is yet to hear the Haydn 
of to-morrow making the wide world shout its joy as men 
sing the anthems of the ' Consummation. ' Some son of 
Mendelssohn will sing of mightier triumphs than ' Elijah ' 
ever wrought. Handel has blessed the earth with the ring- 
ing gladness of the 'Messiah,' but a greater than he shall yet 
set the expectant sons of God rehearsing the alleluias 
which they shall sing when, by the crowned King of men, 
the kingdom is delivered to the Father, Messiah's work 
well done. 

''Greater secrets than Galileo, Newton, Davy, Watt, 
Morse, Gray, Edison, or Rontgen have fathomed wait on 
the persistence and adaptation of the sons of God to still 
further bless and change the world. Marvels more won- 
derful than steam or electricity, than telegraph or tele- 
phone, than graphophone or X-rays, shall continue the 
world's amazement and serve as the means by which the 
men of earth shall do more perfectly their heavenly Fa- 
ther's pleasure."* 

The wonders are not all accomplished. Your hands may 
fashion the invention that will win the plaudits of the 
world. Your mind may grasp the secret that will trans- 
form the lives of millions. Your faith may link the race 

* Lemmon, Better Things for Sons of God. 



372 The Eternal Building. 

to the new century's chariot of the divine enterprise and 
move the world up the hills of difficulty, and hasten the 
consummation of the great task of God. From the mount 
which present faith has strength to climb, the horizon is 
golden with the pent-up grace that soon will rush with 
celestial celerity to every needy cloudy valley of the earth. 
The golden age is coming; great faith now leads it on. 
Its dawn begins to break. We are living in a glorious time. 
To be living is to be triumphant if we will. To be living 
means to have the glorious opportunity of so tenanting 
THE GREATEST BUILDING IN THE WORLD that 
from it as the Temple of the Eternal there shall go forth 
the faith that shall overcome the world and bind it to the 
heart of God. To be living is to be building; rouse, then, 
ye sons of to-day, and build so well that throughout the 
ages to come you may rejoice in the Christlike perfec- 
tion of your character, for thou art THE ETERNAL 
BUILDING. 



PLUS ULTRA. 



INDEX. 



Adam not tempted for all the race, 290. 

^Eschylus the pride of the Greeks, 52. 

Alexander the Great smites Asia, lifts Eu- 
rope, 18; laughs at impossibilities, 160. 

Ambition, why it burns hot to-day, 146. 

Amusements an appeal to the lower na- 
ture, 74. 

Andrew, Governor, prompt response to 
Lincoln's call, 134. 

Appelles's, painting at Venice, 115. 

Appetite an appeal to the flesh, 74. 

Arnott on savagery and civilization, 100. 

Atheism, blindness, 179; its portrait drawn 
by Theodore Parker, 180-183. 

Atonement answers the nature of things, 
261. 



Basle, the monk who turned hell to heav- 
en, 125. 

Beecher, a majestic animal, 53 ; conquer- 
ing England, m. 

Beethoven no business man, 205. 

Behaim points Columbus to the New 
World, 231. 

Bible, best revealer of moral law, 232 ; wise 
to heed its counsel, 245 ; destroying, does 
not destroy religion, 248; ismarvelously 
true, 252 ; terse, yet not clumsy, 262 ; a 
magnetizer, 278; gives time to con- 
science, 279. 

Bismarck breaks imperial colts at eighty, 
S3- 

Books, get their wisdom under cover, 212 ; 
strange things, 212 ; alphabet opens them 
all, 213 ; take you everywhere, 214 ; per- 
mit choice of companions, 214 ; annihi- 
late time, 215 ; give you life in all ages, 
216 ; are never sullen, petulant, nor 
saucy, 216 ; their wireless telegraphy to 
all lands and lives, 217 ; by them I live 



in all centuries and know all heroes, 
217-222 ; what they tell, 221 ; better than 
bric-a-brac, 222 ; influence of good and 
evil, 223 ; men binders, 224 ; Thoreau's 
rule, 224; biography, blood of history, 
224 ; fun in it, 225 ; fiction for dessert, 
225 ; take solid meals, 226 ; know the 
book, 226. 

Brain, needs to be clear, 67 ; seventy-year 
clock, 67 ; enlarge it, 157, 163 ; why en- 
large it, 161; its vast inheritance, 161, 
164 ; has a hard time to keep up with 
rush, 162 ; its world grasp, 163 ; store- 
house of the ages, 164 ; never economize 
at its expense, 222. 

Brains not essential to sociability, 103. 

Brotherhood, human, must be recognized, 
140; must clean the other fellow, 142; 
its organization the work of the ages, 
143-146; weaving fast these days, 147; 
cure of social ills. 147 ; how it will affect 
men, 148 ; advanced by invention, 149. 

Brougham's marvelous physical endurance, 

53- 
Buddha, the religion he built, 27. 
Buddhism, why it failed, 28; cannot 

cleanse sin, 259. 
Bunyan glorifies a dungeon, 350. 
Business, hearse a poor delivery wagon, 

131 ; inherits best methods of past, 165. 



Cables, projected ocean, 151. 

Canals, great projected, 151. 

Character, cannot attain perfection with- 
out Christ, 42; may be Satanic or God- 
like, 42 ; needs a good body, 49 ; where 
contest for it begins, 109 ; it must start 
with God, 178. 

Charles IX, torment for St. Bartholomew. 
256. 



374 



Index. 



Chaucer's sturdy fist, 52. 

Cheerfulness, universal funeral not yet be- 
gun, 126 ; why Haydn's music was joy- 
ful, 126; Dr. Merryheart always wel- 
come, 127 ; a thing of the heart, 127 ; 
begets confidence, 128; learn to laugh, 
128; saved by a monkey, 129; " Better 
Laugh," 129 ; off with blue glasses, 130; 
keep your woes to yourself, 130 ; swal- 
lowing sunshine, 131 ; don't use a hearse 
for a delivery wagon, 131 ; Sydney 
Smith's missing curate, 132 ; world theirs 
who enjoy it, 132 ; sing at your work, 
132 ; the world's a cheery place, 133. 

Christ, the glorified Man, 36; his marvel- 
ous character, 43 ; a gentleman, 125 ; al- 
ways prompt, 134 ; failure in Nazareth 
success in world, 141 ; his life and 
death answer the demand of the soul, 
261 ; temptation real, 295 ; no need to 
say " I am Love," 325 ; his life the biog- 
raphy of love, 326 ; his love sways the 
race, 330-333 ; all the great bow to him, 

334- 

Christianity, its founding, 29-32 ; com- 
merce its handmaid, 143; cleanses sin, 
260. 

Church, its rise, 331 ; always known per- 
secution, 332. 

Cicero, ostracizes the dyspepsia, 50. 

Civilization the product of the forgotten, 
165. 

Clark, Dr. F. E., around the world in a 
year, 142. 

Clergy, examples of health and strength, 
53- 

Columbus inspired by Behaim, 231. 

Commerce, its father and birth, 107 ; and 
Christianity on same train, 143. 

Companionship, its beginning, 102, 105 ; 
necessary to perfection, 105, 108 ; starts 
contest for character, 109. 

Confucianism cannot cleanse sin, 259. 

Confucius, the religion he built, 26. 

Conscience, Shakespeare's definition, 230 ; 
it is instinctive, 230 ; architect of man- 
hood, 231 ; moral thermometer, 232 ; 
must know the moral law, 232 ; obedi- 
ence to it price of peace, 235 ; no escape 
from it, 237 ; we must eternally keep 
company with it, 238 ; its terrible fore- 
bodings, 253 ; continual stings, 254-257 ; 



mixture of conscience, reason, and judg- 
ment, 262 ; the trial, 263-265 ; Will the 
sheriff, 265, 270; "Ought" weighed, 
266 ; is God speaking, 267 ; true Jacob's 
ladder, 268 ; it grows, 268; how it treats 
rebellion, 270 ; rebellion never aims for 
the right, 272 ; puzzle of infallibility, 273 ; 
compass, 274 ; but no woods, 275 ; born 
and bred to light, 276 ; the heathen, 273, 
277 ; compels missions, 277 ; live by the 
light, 278 ; its cure, 278 ; must never re- 
sign, 279 ; legend of ring, 280 ; sentinel 
of Gibraltar, 280. 

Consecration, its beauty and power, 
337- 

Constantine, good and evil of his recogni- 
tion of Christianity, 32. 

Cook, Joseph, conscience instinctive, 230; 
certainties in religion, 234. 

Copernicus builds a new astronomy, 23. 

Courtesy, pays, 124 ; takes courage. 125. 

Cranmer burning his hand first, 338. 

Creation, man its interpretation, 8. 

Cromwell rears England's greatness, 19, 
35°- 

Cross-bearing, what it means, 342-344. 

Cyr, Louis, king of strong men, 61. 



Dance, the, is always lewd, 86 ; joy-dance 
needs no wax, 87 ; an accomplishment 
for vice, 88 ; procuress of adultery, 87, 
90-93 ; Inspector Byrnes, 90 ; candidates 
for immorality, 93 ; all churches condemn 
it, 93-95 ; Bishops Hopkins, McElvaine, 
Meade, Coxe, 94 ; Catholic bishops, 95 ; 
consequences of associate vice, 96; Pro- 
fessor Wilkinson, 97 ; " Woe is me if I 
utter not this truth ! " 97. 

David makes Israel great, 17. 

Descartes, his philosophy, 173. 

Douglass, George, on social vice, 96. 

Douglass, Stephen A., a slave of cup, 

83- 
Drunkenness, the equisine cure, 204. 



Easter at holy sepulcher, 353. 

Education the difference between savagery 

and civilization, 100. 
Electricity, its marvels, 25; whence it 

comes, 112. 



Index, 



375 



England, her commerce works for brother 

hood, 144. 
Exercise nature's life-preserver, 63. 



Faith, ties to God, 354 ; Sir Humphrey 
Davy longs for it, 355 ; what it is, 355; 
no mystery, 357 ; foundation of business, 
farm, store, manufacturing, sea-going, 
357i 35 8 ; governments exist by it, 358 ; 
the master of all enterprise, 359 ; foun- 
dation of education, 359 ; Bishop An- 
drews's definition, 360 ; George D. Her- 
ron's, 361 ; increases manhood, 362 ; wins 
by the clinch, 363 ; highest faith makes 
highest men — samples : Abraham, Moses, 
Elijah, David, Daniel, Paul, John, Cal- 
vin, Cromwell, 363 ; Luther, Wesley, 
Edwards, Lincoln, 364 ; Miiller, Wich- 
ern, 365 ; Simpson, 366 ; Paton, 367 ; 
secret of conquering, 367 ; Paul reveals 
it, 368 ; arm and heart behind the sword, 
369 ; the blessing which waits, 369 ; 
golden age ahead, 370; wonders not all 
performed, 371 ; build well, 372. 

Ferris Wheel, 15. 

Florida monster, 101. 

Fools, none but those who choose to be, 
213. 



Galileo discovers the universe, 23. 

Garibaldi's rally cry, 338. 

Genius, patience is its master, 197. 

Gentlemen tested, 76. 

God, universe demands him, 176 ; revealed 
by his works, 177 ; every atom of uni- 
verse praises him, 183; sum and source 
of all ideals, 184; source of all right- 
eousness, 233 ; character must start 
with him, 178 ; no escape from him, 
238 ; enswathes the race, 239 ; he is the 
nature of things, 243 ; the Father, 324, 
326. 

Good manners, come by culture, 115 ; not 
mortgaged to opulence, 116; facilitate 
social intercourse, 116; an open sesame, 
117 ; "knock me clean down, miss," 118; 
come by polishing, n8 ; shyness a dis- 
ease, 119; slay self-conceit, 120; born 
at home, 120 ; win in the world, 121 ; 
Mirabeau,Wilkes,Fox,Madame de Stael, 



121 ; Marlborough, Chesterfield, Choate, 
Lincoln, Fenelon, Demosthenes, 122 ; 
says things right, 122 ; there are millions 
in it, 123 ; Winans wins by it, 124 ; de- 
mands courage, 125 ; the monk Basle, 
125. 

Goldsmith seeks clerical orders in scarlet 
breeches, 205. 

Grant, battle of Shiloh, 185 ; Lincoln 
stands by him, 185. 

Greece, her games made heroes, 60 ; her 
contribution to civilization, 144. 

Greeks in love with perfect physique, 
64. 



Hand, marvels of human, 65. 

Hannibal greatest military genius, 191. 

Harvey discovers circulation of blood, 
25- 

Hawaii, how it became respectable, 142. 

Health, beginning of greatness, 49, 52 ; 
music of sound body, 56. 

Heat, whence it comes, 13. 

Heredity, invisible ink of life, 48 ; pedi- 
gree, 54 ; an unwelcome but solemn fact, 
55 ; works good as well as ill, 56. 

Heroism silent though burning to death, 
192. 

Higher criticism a cannibal, 162. 

Holy Spirit, answer of God to man's thirst 
for power, 344-348 ; seek him, not it, 
345 ; no full manhood without him, 348 ; 
what empowered men have done, 350; 
the lit torch flames, 354. 

Hugo, Victor, the race as a reader, 156 ; 
Valjean his master character, 255. 

Hygeia, god of the Greeks, 60. 



Ill-health, great achievements in spite of 

ill 51. 
Incarnation necessary to understand God's 

character, 324. 
Immortality accepted in quest for truth, 

233- 

Impurity, its terrible penalties, 96. 

Intemperance, moderation impossible, 82 ; 
the great destroyer, 82-85 \ i ts slaves — 
Johnson, 82 ; Lamb, Webster, 83 ; Burns, 
Poe, Lawrence's crew, 85 ; Talmage on 
rum, 86 ; the equisine cure, 204. 



376 



Index. 



Inventions, product of many minds, 166 ; 
some of their marvels, 149 ; some which 
are coming, 152. 



Jews, their social force, 144. 

Job, the patient patriarch, 194 ; his temp- 
tation, 283-287. 

Johnson, Andrew, drunk when sworn in as 
Vice President, 82. 

Johnson, Dr., tactless and ponderous, 
206. 

Judgment, how it comes, 265. 



Keep up with the times, 162. 
Kepler thinks God's thoughts, 23. 
Klondike, takes a will to win there, 185. 
Knowledge never increases size of head, 
180. 



Ladder of Self-evident Truth. See Truth. 

Lamb, Charles, master and slave, 83. 

Law, universal, 240 ; what follows, 242. 

Life, is what we make it, 198; its working 
hours, 236. 

Light, whence it comes, 123. 

Lincoln, builder of freedom, 21, 350; 
strong man of his day, 52. 

Love, man thirsts for it, 323 ; alone could 
provide the Christ, 324 ; incarnation 
necessary to know God, 324 ; Jesus 
needed not to say, "I am — ," 325 ; Christ 
the biography of, 326 ; man loved by 
triune God, 327; not an zV, but him, 327 ; 
man's spirit identical in quality with 
God's, 328 ; love expressed by sacrifice, 
329 ; manhood deficient unless it images 
God, 330 ; Christ's hold on the race, 330- 
333 ; all the great bow to him, 334 ; chap- 
ter of its conquests, 334-338. 

Luther, builds Protestantism, 32, 350 ; 
voices his age current, 167. 



Macbeth,Lord and Lady, conscience stung, 
254, 258. 

Man, more than life, 8 ; God's image, 8 ; 
his first sign a home, 11; interpretation 
of nature, 11 ; greatest building in the 
world, 35; marvelous body, 35, 63 ; won- 



derful brain, 37; divine within him, 38; 
culmination of physical universe, 67 ; 
where his victuals come from, 69 ; mas- 
ter of all forces, 72 ; to subdue the world, 
100 ; his animal birthright inferior, 106 ; 
imperfect without companions, 106-109 ; 
whole world before him, 141-143 ; must 
live and give for the world, 154; why he 
is exalted, 157 ; enlarged vision and 
hearing, 158 ; lengthened fingers, 158 ; 
tongue longer, 159 ; puts on seven-league 
boots, 160 ; looks on an ideal, 247 ; how 
would he live ? 247 ; must be an over- 
comer, 290; invisible to human sight, 
315 ; body a machine, 316 ; a ship with 
a captain, 318 ; loved by triune God, 
327 ; deficient without Christ, 330. 

Manhood, only sturdy, can meet the need, 
153- 

Marshall, Chief Justice, stalled by a tree, 
205. 

Marvels, some of those before us, 149-153. 

Mediocrity wins by will and persistence, 
186. 

Mayer, F. B. , makes Atlantic an evangel- 
ist's ferry, 141. 

Milan cathedral, its stairway in the air, 

253- 
Mind, its universal sweep, 37 ; its currents, 

166 ; what it is, what it's for, 168 ; 

world an expression of, 169 ; its capacity 

for truth, 170 ; discovers truth, 171 ; 

what you can do with it, 179. 
Misery contagious, 131. 
Missions, advance agents of prosperity, 

142 ; conscience compels them, 277 ; 

some of their conquests, 335-337. 
Mohammedanism, its builder, 59 ; cannot 

cleanse sin, 259. 
Moody, D. L., conducting revivals, 141. 
Mopsuestenus, man God's image, 8. 
Morality, question of its value, 249 ; stuffs 

its ears, 250. 
Moral law, conscience must know it, 232 ; 

Bible its best revealer, 232. 
Moses, builder of Israel, 16. 
Mother, her power for good, 56. 
Murray, Andrew, links Africa and Ameri- 
ca, 141. 
Music, should glorify God, 48 ; whence it 

comes, 112 ; why Haydn's was joyful, 

126; all bands now play for us, 158. 



Index. 



377 



Napoleon, destroyer of kings, chief builder 

of France, 19 ; defeated by ill-health, 52 ; 

inaugural of the Hundred Days, 114, 

240 ; his punctuality, 136. 
Nations are men alive, 15 ; their builders, 

22. 
Neighbors to all the world, 140. 
Nelson, his promptness, 137. 
Neptune, its discovery, 166. 
Newton, law of gravitation, 24; tactless, 

cat and kittens, 205. 



Olympic games revived for the world, 152. 

Opportunity, Cromwell takes it by the 
forelock, 18 ; Napoleon seized them con- 
stantly, 19 ; Paul grasps his, 31 ; they 
are legion, 153. 

Ostrich, a human, 58. 

Overcomers, men are to be, 290. 



Palmerston, man in his prime at seventy- 
nine, 53. 

Patience, Job its great example, 194 ; peg- 
ging away wins, 195 ; head gardener of 
nature, 195 ; crown of self-mastery, Hen- 
derson wears it, 196 ; appoints a foreign 
missionary, 197 ; price of success, 197 ; 
days are what we put into them, 198 ; 
seed from heaven, 199; its marvelous 
three-inch monument, 199 ; its perfect 
work, 200 ; making a needle of a crow- 
bar, 201 ; how Geradini became the vio- 
linist, Lyman Beecher the preacher, 
CafFarelli the singer, 201 ; practices 
steadily, 202 ; Pomeroy's attempt to 
break jail, 202; cut your way out of 
your dungeon, 203 ; its glorious work, 
204. 

Paul, was built for his work, 30 ; the 
structure he reared, 31. 

Peace, all men desire to end this life and 
pass beyond in, 234 ; conditions for en- 
joying, 242. 

Pentecost, described, 29 ; not elective, 
348. 

Perry, Commodore, opens Japan, 45. 

Personality, fire of, 3. 

Pessimism never prospers, 131. 

Peter, at Pentecost, 29 ; his enduring work, 
35c- 



Politeness, among the humanities, 116 ; 
pays, 123 ; wins, 210. 

Power, man's thirst for, 338 ; prized every- 
where, 339; its first harnessings, 339; 
nothing new created, 340 ; material in- 
tensifies longing for spiritual, 341; life 
not all transfiguration, 342 ; love insuffi- 
cient to conquer, 342-344 ; what follow- 
ing Christ means, 342 ; revelation of 
three mounts, 343 ; God empowers by 
entering himself, 344 ; not z"/, but him, 
345 ; secured only by surrender, 346 ; 
through prayer, 346 ; prayer crown of 
culture, 347; no complete manhood 
without, 348 ; organ illustration, 348 ; 
what empowers the cannon ball, 349; 
achievements of empowered men, 350 ; 
golden age before us, 351 ; " I believe in 
the Holy Ghost," 351 ; day of God 
comes, 373; baptism waits, 353; Easter 
at holy sepulcher, 353 ; darkness lit by 

fire, 354- 

Poverty has rights, 115. 

Prayer, crown of all culture, 346. 

Prodigies are monstrosities, 161. 

Promptness, a prompt universe, 133 ; 
Christ's, 134 ; Governor Andrew's, 134 ; 
lost time never regained, 135; fifteen 
minutes kills two hours, 135 ; Washing- 
ton and Napoleon at dinner, 135 ; the 
life of business, 136; work and time 
must take same train, 137 ; keep your 
watch right, 137; wins leadership, 137; 
Nelson, Cobbett, 137; "to-morrow" a 
thief, 138; Cotton curses to-morrow, 
139 ; Raleigh and Scott to-day men, 
139- 

Prostitution fed by the dance, 86-93, 95- 
98. 

Protestantism, how it was built, 33; its 
builders, 33; triumphs through Crom- 
well, 18. 



Quarles, Francis, man his worst witness, 
230. 

Railroads projected to bind the earth, 
149. 

Randolph, John, duel with Clay, reconcili- 
ation, remorse, death, 256. 



378 



Index. 



Reading, dislike of, deformity, 213 ; vast 
value, 213 ; take square meals with some 
excursions, 222; what to read, 223. 

Reality and truth, 169; speechmaker for 
eternal, 169 ; different kinds of, 171. 

Reason, cannot prove atonement, 258 ; a 
lawyer practicing before Conscience, 
263. 

Redemption cures the race, 261. 

Regeneration, nature of things demands 
it, 252. 

Religion, largely man-made, 26 ; needs no 
wax for its ears, 250 ; essential to man- 
hood, 261. 

Revelation only can declare atonement, 
258. 

Rome, the partition destroyer, 144. 

Rontgen, his discoveries speed every- 
where, 141. 



Salvation, natural conditions of, 242; 

what it is, 243. 
Sampson, Charles A., modern Samson, 

61. 
Sandow, his muscle and his rivals, 61. 
Satan, the real, 283 ; his marvelous power, 

284-287 ; a gigantic failure, 287 ; cannot 

be loved into good behavior, 342. 
Science, the present its age of marvels, 

145 ; its music, 26 ; how it performs 

wonders, 112-114. 
Scott, Sir Walter, blockhead and baronet, 

60. 
Self-denial test of manhood and manners, 

76. 
Sin, its blight on every life; its remedy, 

42. 
Slavery, its overthrow, 22 ; its horrors, 

182. 
Smith, Sydney, cheerful in misery, 133. 
Sociability, not dependent on brains, 103 ; 

fostered by good victuals, 104. 
Soul, it is God in man, 39 ; its gift to the 

body, 40 ; its " yes " and " no " to God, 

41. 
Soul-saving, God can work only through 

men, 329. 
Speeches, great ones not accidents, 191 ; 

first, of Sheridan, Curran, Disraeli, Sa- 
vonarola, 192. 
St. Bartholomew stings Charles IX, 256. 



Strength gives sinew for triumph, 52. 

Success, what it is, in ; its science, 112- 
115 ; its parents, 138 ; to-day's prizes the 
greatest, 146 ; boundless opportunities 
for it. 



Tact, hyperdermic injections of horse- 
sense, 204 ; skillful contact, 204; tactless , 
wiseacres, Newton, Marshall, Bee- 
thoven, Adam Smith, Goldsmith, Machi- 
avelli, 205 ; Dante, Dr. Johnson, 206 ; 
what it is, 206 ; lack of, causes spites 
and blunders, 206 ; visits of Aunty Dole- 
ful, 207 ; is never boorish — French officer 
and Empress Josephine, Fontenelle, 207 ; 
gets a bicycle, 208 ; says graceful things, 
208 ; the wit which extricates, darkey, 
Redmond, circus clown, 209; magician 
who hatches success, 210 ; is always po- 
lite, 210; all depends on a word, 211; 
can be the most selfish thing in the 
world, 211 ; consecrate it to best use, 
212. 

Telegraphy annihilates space, 159. 

Temper, stock raisers never breed from 
tricky animals, 54. 

Temptation, each life has a wilderness, 
281 ; devil is dead, 282 ; who carries his 
business on ? 283 ; the real Satan, 284- 
287 ; testing the law of life, 287 ; in man- 
ufacturing, 288 ; in nature, 288 ; thus 
far no malignity, 289; morality enters, 
289 ; men must be overcomers, 290 ; 
Adam not tempted for all the race, 290 ; 
is revelation, 291 ; world a training 
school, 292 ; in physical and intellectual 
training, 293 ; no education without, 294; 
no business without, 294 ; and risk, 295 ; 
resistance conquers, 295 ; Christ's in wil- 
derness, 296 ; reveals character, 296 ; 
mastered, develops spiritual muscle, 297 ; 
how resist, 297 ; don't flirt with sin, 
298; "hell" in saloon, 299; running 
into danger, workmen on powder keg, 
Godfrey at Namar, 299 ; don't monkey 
with a buzz saw, 300; evil an endless 
chain, 300 ; all hooks baited, 301 ; bank 
not on strength, 302 ; fight habit, 302 ; 
study your foe, 303 ; guard your weak 
spots, 304 ; keep busy, 305 ; David out- 
wits Adonijah, 305 ; cultivate the pres- 



Index. 



379 



ence of God, 307 ; God's proof-men, 307 ; 
dizzy, trust, 308 ; the glorious aftermath, 
308. 

Tenant, the marvelous, of the eternal 
building, 313 ; all other than his spirit 
serves his spirit, 313 ; man a spirit, 314 ; 
nothing ghostly, 314 ; real man invisible 
to human sight, 315 ; body a machine, 
315 ; spirit is the man, 316 ; two uni- 
verses, 317 ; spiritual man eternal, 313, 
318 ; body a ship, spirit the captain, 318; 
spiritual man chafes in body, 319 ; his 
spirit compasses the universe, 320 ; soul 
in a cage, 321 ; eagle soars, 322 ; God 
answers hunger of spirit, 323. 

Theism, sum of all philosophy, 184. 

Theology wears new clothes, 162. 

Thompson, Hugh M., music should glorify 
God, 48 ; man is to subdue the world, 100. 

Thorndale, man more than a life, 8. 

Thought, its singing currents, 166. 

Tobacco, cuspidores always foul, 75 ; de- 
stroys good manners, 76 ; angels do not 
use tobacco, 77 ; destroys moral sense, 
77 ; disease breeder, 78-81 ; destroys pro- 
creative power, 81. 

Truth, is hooked by the mind, 169 ; and 
reality, 169 ; mind discovers, 171 ; its 
pursuit sublime, 171 ; the great evangel, 
172 ; the complement of mind, 177 ; how 
to find, 177 ; Ladder of Self-evident, all 
men desire to die in peace, 234 ; how 
can they ? 235 ; working hours of life, 
237 ; build a king to live a king, 237 ; 
eternal company with our conscience, 
238 ; divine enswathement of race ; 239 ; 
past unchangeable, 234, 238, 254 ; law 
universal, 240 ; Christ acknowledges it, 
241 ; natural conditions of salvation, 
242 ; God the nature of things, he can, 
not deny himself, 242 ; frictionless lives, 
244 ; the instructor is useful, 245 ; con- 
struct an ideal man, 245 ; how he looks, 
246; how would he act ? 247 ; vice is war, 
248 ; Bible not necessary to religion, 
249 ; value of morality, 249 , sirens and 
wax, Orpheus and song, 250; the pure 
too great to stoop, 251 ; music of full- 
orbed life, 252; nature of things says 
you must be born again, 252 ; forebod- 
ings of punishment, 253; sting of con- 
science, 254-257 ; the red record, 255 ; 



Clarence, Valjean, Randolph, 255 ; 
Charles IX, 256; scorpion stings itself, 
257 ; reason and revelation, 258 ; the 
Macbeths, 258; search for cleansing, 
259- 
Tunnels, projected wonders in, 151. 



Universe, declares mind, 175 ; reveals its 
architect, 176 ; an expression of his 
thought, 177 ; developer of intelligence, 
178 ; all its atoms praise God, 183. 

Uranus bound to Neptune, so man to 
neighbor, 146. 



Vice is treachery to soul, 248. 
Victoria, Queen, the jubilee of, 142. 



War, destructive of brotherhood, 145; is 

fought by new methods and weapons, 

162. 
Washington, America's builder, 201, 350; 

his punctuality, 136. 
Waterloo, battle of, 191. 
Watt sees the kettle boil, 339. 
Wesley builds Methodism, 34, 350; his 

larger monument, 35 ; voices his age 

current, 167. 
Whitefield, from taproom to pulpit, 34, 

35°. 

Wild oats, sow them, reap them, 98. 

William of Orange upholder of Protest- 
antism, 19. 

Will power, three kinds of people, 184 ; 
room for the man who accomplishes 
things, 185 ; pick-axe to glory, 185 ; two 
legs do not make a man, 186 ; slaves for 
lack of, 186; Antietam's soldiers, 187 ; 
Yankees get there, 187 ; always matches 
events, 187; its mastery of the body, 
Jerrold, Burr, Wolfe, Torstenson, Muley 
Moluc, Texans, 188; Seneca, Darwin, 
Wilson, George Douglass, 189 ; wins 
battles, 190; knows no impossibilities, 
Alexander proves it, 190 ; Hannibal the 
indomitable, 191 ; Napier at Mecanee, 
191 ; Wellington and army at Waterloo, 
191; necessary to oratory, Sheridan, 
Fox, Cobden, 191 ; Phillips, Curran, 
Disraeli, Savonarola, Garrison, 192 ; 



380 



Index. 



keeps nose to grindstone, 192 ; thrives 

upon persecution, 193 ; what is a man 

without it, 193. 
Wisdom is humble, 179 ; getting it under 

cover, 212. 
Wolfe wins America for Protestantism at 

Quebec, 19. 
World, fashioned for man, 68; produces 



for man, 69, 71; field for man's enter- 
prise, 141 ; produces plenty for all men, 
148; a whispering gallery, 158; an ex- 
pression of mind, 170 ; reveals its Crea- 
tor 176. 



Zangwell's fat girl, 58. 



